Colorado Winter Sunset 122909
Originally uploaded by rosethistleartworks
Beautiful winter sunset as we finally got to just above freezing yesterday! Where's our global warming? lol
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Colorado Winter Sunset 122909
Colorado Winter Sunset 122909
Originally uploaded by rosethistleartworks
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Ronald Reagan - We Must Fight!!!
"Political Correctness" died on a plane with heroes that said, "Let's roll".
Ronald Reagan – We Must Fight
Now let’s set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war. But, there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace. And you can have it in the next second. Surrender. Admittedly, there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement. And this is the specter our well-meaning, liberal friends refuse to face; that their policy of accommodation IS appeasement and it gives no choice between peace and war; only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand, the ultimatum. And what then? Well, Nikita Kruschev has told his people, he knows what our answer will be. He has told them that we’re retreating under the pressure of the Cold War. And someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time, we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he’s heard voices pleading for peace at any price, or better red than dead, or as one commentator put it, he’d rather live on his knees than die on his feet. And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don’t speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin? Just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refuse to fire the shot heard ‘round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools and our honored dead, who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis, didn’t die in vain. Where then is the road to peace?
Well, it’s a simple answer, after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, there is a price we will not pay. There is a point beyond which they must not advance. Winston Churchill said the destiny of man is not measured by material compensations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits, not animals. He said there’s something going on in time and space and beyond time and space which whether we like it or not, spells DUTY. You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children, this the last best hope of man on earth or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
AMERICA HAS BEEN TOO BUSY
AMERICA HAS BEEN TOO BUSY - article from Destiny Magazine 1938-1967 by CR Dickey
George Washington, in his Farewell Address to the people of the United States said:
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morals are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props to the duties of men and citizens.
“And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, both reason and experience forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle….
“It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and, too, novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”
That the revered Father of our Country referred to Christianity in particular, rather than to religion in general, we know from his record as a Protestant churchman and from such statements as the following which he made when appointing the hour for worship in the brigades:
“The Commander-in-chief directs that divine services be performed every Sunday at eleven o’clock. While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.”
It is a well-known fact that Washington and his compatriots built our national structure upon the principles of Jesus Christ and the Common Law, both of which are rooted in the writings of Moses and the prophets. These notable statesmen were the instruments of Providence to lay the foundation of a unique nation in a new land. It has been said that “Washington was as divinely selected, endowed and blessed as any man in the world’s history.” One cannot find outside the Bible narrative a record of men so devoted to “exalted justice” as were these moral and intellectual giants who charted the course of our Republic and framed its Constitution. They trusted not wholly in their own wisdom, nor in the force of arms, nor in commercial genius; they knew, as did the Psalmist, that “Except the Lord built the house, they labour in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” (PS. 127:1).
We Americans in a world at war must think on our ways. We must re-examine our beginning if we would maintain those elements which guarantee life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In I Kings, Chapter 20, there is a strange little parable. It was directed to ancient Israel and yet, oddly enough, it is even more strikingly applicable to modern Anglo-Saxon Israel. Let us review it briefly.
One fateful day Ahab, king of Israel, traveled along the highway toward Samaria. A prophet in disguise met the king by the way and related to him this story:
“Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle: and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver. And as they servant was busy here and there, he was gone.” (I Kings 20:39-40.)
Quickly the stranger removed his disguise and the king discerned that he was of the prophets. Facing Ahab boldly the prophet gave an explanation that was also a stern accusation:
“Thus saith the Lord, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.” (I Kings 20:42.)
Then Ahab understood the parable. Israel’s king was the servant; Benhadad, the Syrian king and Israel’s deadliest foe, was the man whom God had delivered into Ahab’s hand for utter destruction. While Ahab dawdled --- busy here and there with peace negotiations and covenants --- Benhadad slipped through the noose and was gone.
“Thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.” In anger and heaviness of heart Ahab continued on his way to Samaria.
Alas! America too has been busy --- here and there --- extending hospitality and undue consideration to the nation’s enemies. It would be most interesting to know how many malignant foes have slipped through the hands of our national administrators during the generation of which we are a part. Danger lurks in the fact that we can never get our foes deported, nor keep them in prison long enough to serve a sentence. They ought to be put to death; that is the Scriptural method and the only one ever known to work effectively. How much longer will the present laxity be tolerated? How many more of the nation’s youth will be sacrificed on the altar of criminal negligence? Their blood will be on the heads of those who protect the traitors among us; but that will not bring back the dead, nor mitigate the sorrow of wives, mothers and children. It is to our shame that, instead of punishing the betrayers in our midst, we persecute the men who point them out.
Again let George Washington speak these words of warning; “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens), the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial.”
This same warning is stated innumerable times in the Bible as a safeguard to the Lord’s people. Israel was never known to win when in league with the enemies of God. We are not profiting as we should by our knowledge of Israel’s experiences. Unfortunately, many of the nation’s leaders are heeding neither Bible, nor the counsel of George Washington. Using the war emergency as an excuse, they are injecting totalitarian methods into our national life with increasing frequency. Yet is it logical to suppose that America’s treasured freedom can be preserved by adopting the methods of dictators?
Bishop James E. Freeman spoke wisely when he said: “Nothing alien to our traditions may assume to govern or control us in our course or determine for us our relation to problems at home or abroad….The recognition of the immutable laws of God, unfailing allegiance to those fundamental principles of life given to mankind by Jesus Christ, these we may not ignore or neglect, except to our peril.”
We have been too busy worshipping Mammon and chasing empty pleasures to see the totalitarian secret agents at work within our borders. While crafty masterminds were forging ahead in Europe and Asia with well-laid plans for world conquest, they kept us talking about disarmament, peace, reconciliation, brotherly love and international good will. And now our hearts stop a beat and a sickening horror fills our souls as we read that American boys --- precious boys like yours and mine --- are being captured and dragged into enemy camps to suffer a fate that we dare not contemplate. Like Ahab we are facing the results of our stupendous folly. Having disregarded God’s decrees for our national safety, we are now under the sentence of His irrevocable verdict: “Thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.”
Many of America’s enemies have come from foreign shores; others were born in this country but maintain alien connections and loyalties; and still another group --- the most contemptible of all --- is composed of native stooges who serve as a smoke screen for the first two groups. World revolution, as a means to world dominion, is the program of certain internationalists who own allegiance to no nation and are traitors to the welfare of all. We are forgetting to watch them at the present moment. When the watchman sleeps, or is busy elsewhere, the betrayer has his opportunity. If we become too absorbed battling rats at the back door, we may not see the bear and the wolf when they enter the front door to take possession of the house.
Subversive workers find ridicule a most efficacious tool. They use it in season and out of season on everything that gets in their path. For some years they have directed ridicule toward the good old American virtue of patriotism. They know that the easiest way to produce disintegration in any country is to break down the affection and loyalty of its citizens; to convince them that there is really nothing worth fighting and dying for. Ridicule is a subtle and poisonous barb; many grew lethargic under its influence. That is why it took the Pearl Harbor stab in the back to wake us up.
A true patriot’s attitude is summed up in this terse sentence: “My country, right or wrong, when right to keep her right; when wrong to put her right.” Valiant men are going out now to die for our country. Do we, who remain on the home front, have the stamina to live for it and make it right? Have we the courage to overthrow every civil system that thrives by exploiting our citizenry and undermining our republic? If not, then we, like millions in occupied Europe, will pay dearly in blood for our cowardice.
Out of a glorious past comes this thrilling challenge from Daniel Webster: “I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that character to the end of my career. I mean to do this with absolute disregard of personal consequences. What are the personal consequences? What is the individual man, with all the good or evil that may betide him, in comparison with the good or evil which may befall a great country, and in the midst of great transactions which concern that country’s fate? Let the consequences be what they will, I am careless. No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffers, or if he fall, in the defense of the liberties and constitution of his country.”
What now constitutes the direst threat to our freedom and to what we like to call our American way of life? It lies in the fact that so many honest, true-hearted citizens do not realize what is happening to our republican form of government. Again we have been busy --- here and there --- too busy to notice what enemies within have been doing to our cherished liberties.
How naïve we are! What simple means serve to confuse us and blind us to elementary truths! A carefully designed misuse of a single word on the part of clever propagandists has led approximately 130 million people to accept a fundamental error: and that word is “democracy.” Perhaps no other word was ever used so much and understood so little. It adorns the pages of every newspaper, magazine, and book; it resounds in oratorical splendor across the continent from the little red school-house to the congressional and senatorial chambers of the national Capitol. “Our Democracy!”
Does no one remember that our Founding Fathers almost never used the word democracy? In their public addresses they talked about “our Republic” and “our republican form of government.” Democracy? The following paragraphs from Lawful Money Explained by Gertrude M. Coogan, answer the question briefly but adequately.
“The stock-in-trade of a demagogue in all controversy and confusion is the skillful bandying about of words. He artfully uses words in a way intended to convey different meanings to different listeners.
“A word now artfully and deceptively used in this country is DEMOCRACY . Democracy means rule by direct action of the people. Our Constitution did not provide for a democracy, and real democracies have ever produced nothing but chaos and slavery. They have always turned into mobocracies.
“The Founders of America established a Republic. Under a republic the power of government is vested in the citizens, but is delegated and exercised by the representatives of the people. The specific powers our representatives received from us (citizens) were granted to them in our Constitution and its amendments.
“In our particular type of Republic three branches were set up; the legislative could pass laws in accord with the power granted by the citizens and the States, the executive was to see that the laws were carried out, and the judicial was to interpret the laws in accord with the Constitution.
“In speaking of a Republic or Democracy, we are not referring to the Republican or Democratic political parties. The Republican party of today was born sixty-five years after the Constitution was adopted. Partisanship has nothing whatever to do with the fundamental principles underlying our government. All elected officials, whether Democratic or Republican, take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. The immediate job is to get rid of all, regardless of party, who have not kept oath!
“The Constitution would not have guaranteed one form of government if those intelligent men who drafted it had another form in mind. According to Webster, a Republic is ‘A state in which the sovereign power resides in the whole body of the people, and is exercised by representatives elected by them.’ A Democracy is ‘A form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people.’
“The word ‘democracy’ or any of its derivatives is not to be found in our Constitution but we do read in Article IV, Section 4: ‘The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion.’ The public utterances and writings of those who drafted the Constitution of the United States should be considered authentic evidence of their intent.”
George Washington, in his reply to the Senate, said that he was happy in the conviction “that the Senate will at all times cooperate in every measure which may tend to promote the welfare of this confederated Republic.”
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, said in his first inaugural address: “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error or opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
James Madison, who is honored more today for the part he took in drafting and ratifying the Constitution of the United States than for his career as President, stated why he and his illustrious coworkers decided upon a Republic instead of a Democracy. Ponder these relevant words from the “Father of the Constitution”:
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. A Republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”
Despite this irrefutable evidence that the United States of America is a Republic with a republican form of government, men and women, claiming the intelligence to lead their fellowmen, speak and write incessantly about the glories of our Democracy. That shows how dutifully they are following the path prescribed by our enemies!
Professor Harold J. Laski, who numbers among his faithful disciples most of the pseudo “liberals” of Britain and America, tells us that “Soviet Russia is the world’s hope of democracy, alongside of the United States.” There you have the key to the situation! Professor Laski does us a real service by pointing out the ultimate aim of the democracy now being foisted upon unsuspecting American citizens. This spurious democracy is exactly the same thing as Communism in Russia, Nazism in Germany, Fascism in Italy and military dictatorship in Japan. It is designed to undermine the form of our government and to negate the principles and rights guaranteed under our great Constitution. If allowed to complete its deadly course, it will turn our Republic into a totalitarian state and destroy the last vestige of freedom in America, just as it has scourged and desecrated the lands and people of Europe and Asia.
Doubtless unwary citizens in those conquered lands were busy --- here and there --- before the day of desolation and did not see what was happening to them until it was too late. Can it happen here? Will it happen here? It can and it will --- unless --- the populace rises in mighty indignation and rids the land of ALL traitors, regardless of nationality, race or sex.
Will the destroyers of freedom escape justice at our hands as Benhadad eluded Ahab? If so, we need no longer sing, “God bless America”, nor pray “God help America”, for God blesses and helps only those who help themselves.
Theorists who have spent a lifetime advocating various “isms” and the overthrow of representative constitutional government have nothing to offer in its place as a satisfactory way of life. Note the wistfulness in this confession of defeat by England’s veteran socialist, George Bernard Shaw: “I am ready to admit that, after contemplating human nature for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the world’s misery but the way which would have been found by Christ’s will if he had undertaken the work of a modern practical statesman.”
Joseph Chamberlain was once asked why, in his opinion, so many fall short of the goal. He answered, “They come to the place where they turn back. They may have killed the dragon at the first bridge, and at the second, perhaps even at the third, but the dragons are always more formidable the further we go. Many turn back disheartened, and very few will meet the monsters to the end. Almost none is willing to have a try with the demon at the last bridge; but if he does, he has won forever.”
In conflict with satan, Jesus Christ won at the last bridge. His weapon was the Sword of the Spirit --- “It is written.” Today the United States needs more men who are acquainted with that Sword and not afraid to use it; more men who realize that the independence of our nation was established by statesmen unashamed to acknowledge their dependence on God; and more men who know our beginnings as recorded in the Holy Bible and in the annals of this American Republic.
George Washington, in his Farewell Address to the people of the United States said:
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morals are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props to the duties of men and citizens.
“And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, both reason and experience forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle….
“It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and, too, novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”
That the revered Father of our Country referred to Christianity in particular, rather than to religion in general, we know from his record as a Protestant churchman and from such statements as the following which he made when appointing the hour for worship in the brigades:
“The Commander-in-chief directs that divine services be performed every Sunday at eleven o’clock. While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.”
It is a well-known fact that Washington and his compatriots built our national structure upon the principles of Jesus Christ and the Common Law, both of which are rooted in the writings of Moses and the prophets. These notable statesmen were the instruments of Providence to lay the foundation of a unique nation in a new land. It has been said that “Washington was as divinely selected, endowed and blessed as any man in the world’s history.” One cannot find outside the Bible narrative a record of men so devoted to “exalted justice” as were these moral and intellectual giants who charted the course of our Republic and framed its Constitution. They trusted not wholly in their own wisdom, nor in the force of arms, nor in commercial genius; they knew, as did the Psalmist, that “Except the Lord built the house, they labour in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” (PS. 127:1).
We Americans in a world at war must think on our ways. We must re-examine our beginning if we would maintain those elements which guarantee life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In I Kings, Chapter 20, there is a strange little parable. It was directed to ancient Israel and yet, oddly enough, it is even more strikingly applicable to modern Anglo-Saxon Israel. Let us review it briefly.
One fateful day Ahab, king of Israel, traveled along the highway toward Samaria. A prophet in disguise met the king by the way and related to him this story:
“Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle: and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver. And as they servant was busy here and there, he was gone.” (I Kings 20:39-40.)
Quickly the stranger removed his disguise and the king discerned that he was of the prophets. Facing Ahab boldly the prophet gave an explanation that was also a stern accusation:
“Thus saith the Lord, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.” (I Kings 20:42.)
Then Ahab understood the parable. Israel’s king was the servant; Benhadad, the Syrian king and Israel’s deadliest foe, was the man whom God had delivered into Ahab’s hand for utter destruction. While Ahab dawdled --- busy here and there with peace negotiations and covenants --- Benhadad slipped through the noose and was gone.
“Thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.” In anger and heaviness of heart Ahab continued on his way to Samaria.
Alas! America too has been busy --- here and there --- extending hospitality and undue consideration to the nation’s enemies. It would be most interesting to know how many malignant foes have slipped through the hands of our national administrators during the generation of which we are a part. Danger lurks in the fact that we can never get our foes deported, nor keep them in prison long enough to serve a sentence. They ought to be put to death; that is the Scriptural method and the only one ever known to work effectively. How much longer will the present laxity be tolerated? How many more of the nation’s youth will be sacrificed on the altar of criminal negligence? Their blood will be on the heads of those who protect the traitors among us; but that will not bring back the dead, nor mitigate the sorrow of wives, mothers and children. It is to our shame that, instead of punishing the betrayers in our midst, we persecute the men who point them out.
Again let George Washington speak these words of warning; “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens), the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial.”
This same warning is stated innumerable times in the Bible as a safeguard to the Lord’s people. Israel was never known to win when in league with the enemies of God. We are not profiting as we should by our knowledge of Israel’s experiences. Unfortunately, many of the nation’s leaders are heeding neither Bible, nor the counsel of George Washington. Using the war emergency as an excuse, they are injecting totalitarian methods into our national life with increasing frequency. Yet is it logical to suppose that America’s treasured freedom can be preserved by adopting the methods of dictators?
Bishop James E. Freeman spoke wisely when he said: “Nothing alien to our traditions may assume to govern or control us in our course or determine for us our relation to problems at home or abroad….The recognition of the immutable laws of God, unfailing allegiance to those fundamental principles of life given to mankind by Jesus Christ, these we may not ignore or neglect, except to our peril.”
We have been too busy worshipping Mammon and chasing empty pleasures to see the totalitarian secret agents at work within our borders. While crafty masterminds were forging ahead in Europe and Asia with well-laid plans for world conquest, they kept us talking about disarmament, peace, reconciliation, brotherly love and international good will. And now our hearts stop a beat and a sickening horror fills our souls as we read that American boys --- precious boys like yours and mine --- are being captured and dragged into enemy camps to suffer a fate that we dare not contemplate. Like Ahab we are facing the results of our stupendous folly. Having disregarded God’s decrees for our national safety, we are now under the sentence of His irrevocable verdict: “Thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.”
Many of America’s enemies have come from foreign shores; others were born in this country but maintain alien connections and loyalties; and still another group --- the most contemptible of all --- is composed of native stooges who serve as a smoke screen for the first two groups. World revolution, as a means to world dominion, is the program of certain internationalists who own allegiance to no nation and are traitors to the welfare of all. We are forgetting to watch them at the present moment. When the watchman sleeps, or is busy elsewhere, the betrayer has his opportunity. If we become too absorbed battling rats at the back door, we may not see the bear and the wolf when they enter the front door to take possession of the house.
Subversive workers find ridicule a most efficacious tool. They use it in season and out of season on everything that gets in their path. For some years they have directed ridicule toward the good old American virtue of patriotism. They know that the easiest way to produce disintegration in any country is to break down the affection and loyalty of its citizens; to convince them that there is really nothing worth fighting and dying for. Ridicule is a subtle and poisonous barb; many grew lethargic under its influence. That is why it took the Pearl Harbor stab in the back to wake us up.
A true patriot’s attitude is summed up in this terse sentence: “My country, right or wrong, when right to keep her right; when wrong to put her right.” Valiant men are going out now to die for our country. Do we, who remain on the home front, have the stamina to live for it and make it right? Have we the courage to overthrow every civil system that thrives by exploiting our citizenry and undermining our republic? If not, then we, like millions in occupied Europe, will pay dearly in blood for our cowardice.
Out of a glorious past comes this thrilling challenge from Daniel Webster: “I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that character to the end of my career. I mean to do this with absolute disregard of personal consequences. What are the personal consequences? What is the individual man, with all the good or evil that may betide him, in comparison with the good or evil which may befall a great country, and in the midst of great transactions which concern that country’s fate? Let the consequences be what they will, I am careless. No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffers, or if he fall, in the defense of the liberties and constitution of his country.”
What now constitutes the direst threat to our freedom and to what we like to call our American way of life? It lies in the fact that so many honest, true-hearted citizens do not realize what is happening to our republican form of government. Again we have been busy --- here and there --- too busy to notice what enemies within have been doing to our cherished liberties.
How naïve we are! What simple means serve to confuse us and blind us to elementary truths! A carefully designed misuse of a single word on the part of clever propagandists has led approximately 130 million people to accept a fundamental error: and that word is “democracy.” Perhaps no other word was ever used so much and understood so little. It adorns the pages of every newspaper, magazine, and book; it resounds in oratorical splendor across the continent from the little red school-house to the congressional and senatorial chambers of the national Capitol. “Our Democracy!”
Does no one remember that our Founding Fathers almost never used the word democracy? In their public addresses they talked about “our Republic” and “our republican form of government.” Democracy? The following paragraphs from Lawful Money Explained by Gertrude M. Coogan, answer the question briefly but adequately.
“The stock-in-trade of a demagogue in all controversy and confusion is the skillful bandying about of words. He artfully uses words in a way intended to convey different meanings to different listeners.
“A word now artfully and deceptively used in this country is DEMOCRACY . Democracy means rule by direct action of the people. Our Constitution did not provide for a democracy, and real democracies have ever produced nothing but chaos and slavery. They have always turned into mobocracies.
“The Founders of America established a Republic. Under a republic the power of government is vested in the citizens, but is delegated and exercised by the representatives of the people. The specific powers our representatives received from us (citizens) were granted to them in our Constitution and its amendments.
“In our particular type of Republic three branches were set up; the legislative could pass laws in accord with the power granted by the citizens and the States, the executive was to see that the laws were carried out, and the judicial was to interpret the laws in accord with the Constitution.
“In speaking of a Republic or Democracy, we are not referring to the Republican or Democratic political parties. The Republican party of today was born sixty-five years after the Constitution was adopted. Partisanship has nothing whatever to do with the fundamental principles underlying our government. All elected officials, whether Democratic or Republican, take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. The immediate job is to get rid of all, regardless of party, who have not kept oath!
“The Constitution would not have guaranteed one form of government if those intelligent men who drafted it had another form in mind. According to Webster, a Republic is ‘A state in which the sovereign power resides in the whole body of the people, and is exercised by representatives elected by them.’ A Democracy is ‘A form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people.’
“The word ‘democracy’ or any of its derivatives is not to be found in our Constitution but we do read in Article IV, Section 4: ‘The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion.’ The public utterances and writings of those who drafted the Constitution of the United States should be considered authentic evidence of their intent.”
George Washington, in his reply to the Senate, said that he was happy in the conviction “that the Senate will at all times cooperate in every measure which may tend to promote the welfare of this confederated Republic.”
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, said in his first inaugural address: “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error or opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
James Madison, who is honored more today for the part he took in drafting and ratifying the Constitution of the United States than for his career as President, stated why he and his illustrious coworkers decided upon a Republic instead of a Democracy. Ponder these relevant words from the “Father of the Constitution”:
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. A Republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”
Despite this irrefutable evidence that the United States of America is a Republic with a republican form of government, men and women, claiming the intelligence to lead their fellowmen, speak and write incessantly about the glories of our Democracy. That shows how dutifully they are following the path prescribed by our enemies!
Professor Harold J. Laski, who numbers among his faithful disciples most of the pseudo “liberals” of Britain and America, tells us that “Soviet Russia is the world’s hope of democracy, alongside of the United States.” There you have the key to the situation! Professor Laski does us a real service by pointing out the ultimate aim of the democracy now being foisted upon unsuspecting American citizens. This spurious democracy is exactly the same thing as Communism in Russia, Nazism in Germany, Fascism in Italy and military dictatorship in Japan. It is designed to undermine the form of our government and to negate the principles and rights guaranteed under our great Constitution. If allowed to complete its deadly course, it will turn our Republic into a totalitarian state and destroy the last vestige of freedom in America, just as it has scourged and desecrated the lands and people of Europe and Asia.
Doubtless unwary citizens in those conquered lands were busy --- here and there --- before the day of desolation and did not see what was happening to them until it was too late. Can it happen here? Will it happen here? It can and it will --- unless --- the populace rises in mighty indignation and rids the land of ALL traitors, regardless of nationality, race or sex.
Will the destroyers of freedom escape justice at our hands as Benhadad eluded Ahab? If so, we need no longer sing, “God bless America”, nor pray “God help America”, for God blesses and helps only those who help themselves.
Theorists who have spent a lifetime advocating various “isms” and the overthrow of representative constitutional government have nothing to offer in its place as a satisfactory way of life. Note the wistfulness in this confession of defeat by England’s veteran socialist, George Bernard Shaw: “I am ready to admit that, after contemplating human nature for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the world’s misery but the way which would have been found by Christ’s will if he had undertaken the work of a modern practical statesman.”
Joseph Chamberlain was once asked why, in his opinion, so many fall short of the goal. He answered, “They come to the place where they turn back. They may have killed the dragon at the first bridge, and at the second, perhaps even at the third, but the dragons are always more formidable the further we go. Many turn back disheartened, and very few will meet the monsters to the end. Almost none is willing to have a try with the demon at the last bridge; but if he does, he has won forever.”
In conflict with satan, Jesus Christ won at the last bridge. His weapon was the Sword of the Spirit --- “It is written.” Today the United States needs more men who are acquainted with that Sword and not afraid to use it; more men who realize that the independence of our nation was established by statesmen unashamed to acknowledge their dependence on God; and more men who know our beginnings as recorded in the Holy Bible and in the annals of this American Republic.
Monday, November 30, 2009
FRUITS OF THE SOCIAL GOSPEL by CR Dickey
FRUITS OF THE SOCIAL GOSPEL article from Destiny magazine 1938-1967 by CR Dickey
During the momentous years between 1920 and 1940 that strange phenomenon known as the Social Gospel reached the apex of its popularity. Many church conferences of that era were built largely around the Social Gospel as the main triumphant theme. Church dignitaries vied with one another in extolling its glories, all of them confident that its application would bring harmony and peace to the whole world within a few short years. The old Gospel of salvation by repentance, by faith in the efficacy of Christ’s death and resurrection, was laid aside like a worn-out garment. At last society had found a way to save itself.
A few of us detected sour notes in the theme. At that time we knew nothing about the background of the Social Gospel, or its ultimate intent, but instinctively we didn’t like its overtones and undertones. It just didn’t seem to ring true; consequently, it made us vaguely uneasy and left us cold. Soon we were seared by the withering scorn of seminary professors and leading pulpiteers for refusing to accept the teachings and aims of the Social Gospel as the highest expression of the will of Christ. So completely did our colleagues go all out for the newfangled salvation, that we sometimes wondered if novices like ourselves could possibly be right.
So, as pariahs, we sat apart and watched our church and other leading denominations organize various councils and committees to promote the Social Gospel. Queer revolutionary doctrines, alien alike to the spirit of the churches and to the spirit of America, were openly presented in ecclesiastical assemblies. A steady stream of mail began to flow from these councils and committees to the churches across the nation. Bulletins, newsletters, plebiscites, program suggestions, et cetera, deluged the churches; they were designed for the church school, and for every department including men, women and children. No group was neglected in this program of indoctrination. Speakers were sent out from the headquarters of these various Social Action councils, and churches were urged to use them when available.
Before considering the results of the Social Gospel, let us examine briefly its beginning and how it was handed down to us. In an excellent summary of this development under the title, “The Origins of the Social Gospel,” Irving E. Howard, minister of the Hope Congregational Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, writes:
“The Social Gospel was born in the optimistic atmosphere of the nineteenth century conquest of the vast American continent and its abundant natural resources. Man was rapidly becoming the master of nature, aided by the new mechanical inventions which were creating both an industrial and an intellectual revolution. Men everywhere were embracing two new congenial dogmas, that progress was inevitable and that man was essentially good.
“These two doctrines became the fundamentals of the Social Gospel and the impetus to a shift in faith from God to man, from eternity to time, from the individual to the group, individual conversions to social coercion, and from the church to the state. The main inspiration of the new movement was non-Christian, and from the beginning it drifted readily into doctrines increasingly removed from biblical faith.
“Both Unitarianism and Transcendentalism were a part of the blooming of this spirit. Ralph Waldo Emerson became a patron saint of the liberal Protestant, and Emerson’s dogma of an immanent God inherent in nature, and of man who partakes of God to the extent that he himself is divine, became an important dogma to the new movement.
“The pagan origin of the Social Gospel was from the beginning apparent in its readiness to sacrifice Christian faith to the new order. As early as 1873, for example, the Unitarian, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, published The Religion of Humanity, dismissing altogether any faith in God in favor of the new god, man. His challenge, although premature, revealed clearly that the drift was from God to man, and that the new dogma would be preserved through sacrifices in theological faith. Collective man and his society were the new god and the new Jerusalem.” (Faith and Freedom, May 1852.)
From these facts one can readily see how the pagan rationalistic philosophy, which flourished in European universities and theological schools in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, paved the way for the so-called Social Gospel. German historical criticism undermined belief in the authority of the Bible and opened the door to humanistic interpretations of religion and life. Prominent clergymen lost the biblical concept of individual responsibility and began to apply the collectivist idea to the interpretation of Christian teachings. Horace Bushnell, in 1847, published his book Christian Nurture, in which he applied John Locke’s theory of environmentalism to religious experience.
Concerning his work, Irving E. Howard says:
“Instead of converting the individual by evangelism, Bushnell argued, children should be molded by a religious environment. Apart from the obvious fact that children should be taught religion, this was the beginning of an idea that formed the core of the Social Gospel. Instead of the converted individual changing his environment, a changed environment was supposed to convert the individual. It is not difficult to conclude from this, the Social Gospel viewpoint, that the environment, not the individual, is responsible for human behavior.”
Twelve years later Darwin’s Origin of Species appeared and, it was thought by some theologians, put a prop under man’s revolt against the authority of the Scriptures. “The Puritan tradition leaned toward science,” comments the Reverend Howard on this point, “and by the 1880’s the majority of the clergy in this tradition had adjusted their thinking to Darwinism. They drew from the Darwinian theory the optimistic conclusion that an immanent God was at work in history evolving by slow process the Kingdom of God on earth. This furnished the Social Gospel with its philosophy of history.”
Next in the development of the Social Gospel was the idea of using the force of the state to bring about social righteousness. This idea was introduced at a conference at Saratoga, New York, in 1885, attended by such notables as Washington Gladden, Simon Patten, Edwin F. A. Seligman, Edmund J. James, John Bates Clark, Richard T. Ely, Andrew D. White and Woodrow Wilson. Some of these men “were fresh from graduate studies in Germany where they had become enamored with Bismarck’s use of the state in the area of human welfare.”
In 1889, Gladden spoke on “Christian Socialism” at the National Council of Congregational Churches. At that time he said:
“It begins to be clear that Christianity is not individualism. The Christian has encountered no deadlier foe during the last century than that individualistic philosophy which underlies the competitive system.”
Josiah Strong was another exponent of this “nameless drift away from individualism”, yet he said in Our Country, published in 1885, “Socialism attempts to solve the problem of suffering without eliminating the factor of sin.”
Thus we see how Socialism occupied the minds of men almost an hundred years ago. In 1889, an Episcopal minister, William Dwight Porter Bliss, was so influenced by Henry George’s Progress and Poverty and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward that he organized the Society of Christian Socialists consisting of about twenty ministers representing the Episcopalian, Congregational, Unitarian, Universalist, Baptist, Methodist and other denominations. A monthly journal published by the Reverend Bliss declared its purpose in the first issue as follows:
“Business itself today is wrong…it is based on competitive strife for profits….But this is the exact opposite of Christianity….We must change the system.”
Under the influence of the Baptist, Walter Rauschenbusch, and other intellectual lights at the dawn of the twentieth century, the Social Gospel began to take firm root in most of the large Protestant denominations. Official organizations were set up in the churches to advance the Social Gospel. One of the first was the Presbyterian Department of Church and Labor of the Board of Home Missions. In 1901, the National Council of the Congregational Church founded a Labor Committee. The Federation for Social Service was organized by the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) in 1907. The next year thirty-three denominations organized The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America and adopted a Social Creed much like that of the Methodists. 1912 saw the beginning of the interdenominational “Men and Religion Forward Movement,” which advocated government ownership of land, mines, water and other resources.
During the early 1920’s, there was a temporary reaction against socialism which led the “social gospelers ” to shift their emphasis from class conflict to international and interracial affairs. This was a period marked by countless peace organizations and spurious racial propaganda. The ineffective League of Nations was hailed by the Federal Council of Churches as “an international manifestation of the Kingdom of God.”
Then came the economic crash of 1929. It provided a most favorable opportunity for the spread of socialism. As Irving E. Howard aptly says, “During the depression, a reawakened Social Gospel found the time ripe for its message of sanctified covetousness.”
In 1934, delegates to the National Council of Congregational-Christian Churches established a Council for Social Action to carry out the program set forth in the following resolutions:
Therefore be it resolved: That we set ourselves to work toward:
1) The abolition of the profit system, the elimination of its incentives and habits, the legal forms by which it supports, and the moral ideas by which it justifies itself.
2) The inauguration of a thoroughly planned and organized social economy, which apply all our natural and human resources directly to the meeting of human needs, in pursuit of values, democratically chosen: which will,
a) Adjust production to measured consumption requirements, and maintain and extend social services --- health, education, recreation and insurance for all.
b) Eliminate private ownership in the means of production and distribution wherever such private ownership interferes with the success of a planned social economy, making profit unnecessary and impossible.
c) End unemployment, abolish poverty, enable maximum prevention of disease and crime, and stimulate the fullest development of the arts and sciences. Be it further resolved: That this Council urge that the members of our Fellowship increasingly seek to understand and cooperate with the forces and groups making for the above changes in our society.
The Council for Social Action was an extension of the functions of the Social Relations Commission. In “A Proposal for the General Council,” published in the Advance for May 10, 1934, Dr. Arthur E. Holt said:
“With these considerations in mind, it would seem appropriate that the Department of Social Relations be lifted to the rank of a major society in the denominational structure, taking rank alongside the societies which represent church establishment extension at home and abroad; that it be equipped with resources and personnel comparable to the magnitude of the demands upon it.”
Immediately the new Council for Social Action went into high gear, with the same personnel, organization and program as the old Social Relations Commission. Hubert C. Herring became director of the Council for Social Action; two of his assistants, Miss Helen G. Murray and Miss Katherine Terrill, were formerly coworkers in the Department of Social Relations.
It is important to know how these directors of the Council for Social Action propose to accomplish the ends outlined in the resolutions adopted by the General Council. Therefore, we shall let them speak for themselves on the subject. In a News Letter for April 1, 1934, put out by the Department of Social Relations, Miss Murray refers to a speech made by Mary Van Kleeck and discusses it in part as follows:
“In conclusion Miss Van Kleeck drew a picture of a classless society where there will be production for use instead of for profit, the only way out of our difficulties, using the Soviet Union as an example not only of how things must be managed, but also of how power is to be taken from the exploiting class. It is primarily a struggle of the workers against their exploiters, she maintained, and in this struggle Christian people should be on the side of the exploited --- not to give leadership which must be in the hands of the workers themselves, but to serve quite humbly under their direction.”
On June 23, 1934, Mr. Herring delivered an address to some nineteen hundred delegates to the General Council in Oberlin, Ohio, on this subject, “A Crusading Church in Days of Revolution.” His address was printed in full in the Advance for July 5th and 12th, 1934. It is so amazing, so revealing, that we quote at some length:
“It is revolution. The old patterns are torn up. Rugged individualism, the sacred right of capitalism, the vaunted right of a man to run his business as he sees fit without regard to the rights of society, are dead….
“I am not speaking as a protagonist of the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal represents a gallant and chivalrous effort to meet the challenge, and to save in orderly and peaceful fashion something out of the wreckage of our capitalistic order….
“I marvel at the logic of those who damn the New Deal….
“We cannot turn back. Roosevelt’s New Deal, halting and shifting as it may be, is a halfway house along the road which leads to a new ideal of the democratic state.
“Toward what are we to work? Is it the state in which a revived and controlled capitalism shall be enthroned? Is it the socialist state? I dislike labels, especially labels redolent of European conflict and experience. I am not afraid of the word socialism, nor are you. The ideas comprised by the word are the ideas which steadily push toward the fore….
“Assembled amid the ruins of a bankrupt society, we can be sure that the future holds a very different kind of state than any we have known. We may not like the idea of change. We may hanker for the old fireside and the old slippers, but the fireplace no longer draws, and the slippers are lost. Mr. Insull took them away from us.
“We can but conjecture as to the blueprint of the new society. It is dangerous to prophesy, but what, after all, are speeches for if not for conjecture and prophecy? Let me, then, suggest some of the directions in which we may be embarked.
“First, we are definitely headed toward the totalitarian state….The state will increasingly become supreme, and the rights of the individual will correspondingly decrease. In such a state, individual freedom will be disciplined and regimented. This may be distasteful, but it is inevitable….Social control of the means of production is a clear postulate of democracy….
“Second, we hope to move toward an increasingly democratic state….
“Third, we will move toward new motives. The profit motive rules supreme in the industrial era. The profit motive stands bankrupt, shivering and shaking as the chill winds of economic revolution bear down upon it. The day of profit is done, in any such sense as the word has been used during the past one hundred years. The assumption by the state of the principle of responsibility for the welfare of all its citizens carries the corollary of increased taxation. The makers of profit, on the one hand, create a national economic situation in which from ten to fifty million do not share in the profits. The state turns upon the profit-makers and cuts ten percent, twenty percent, seventy-five percent from their profits in order to equalize the load. This happens today. The next step is already apparent. That state says to the steel master, You must use more men, each man will work less hours, each man will receive more pay. The state goes on to say, You must cut your executive salaries, you must limit dividends, you must coordinate your production with your competitors. If this does not work --- this controlled and regimented capitalism --- the time will soon come when the state will say to the steel master, Your business is no longer yours; you will move out and the state will move in. You do not like the picture? It does not matter. The logic of events will transcend our likings.”
It must have been in the autumn of that same fateful year that the Mid-West Regional Meeting of Congregational Churches convened in Grinnell, Iowa. Mr. Herring arrived from the meeting somewhat travel-stained, having come directly from Mexico City, and was received with the acclaim of a warrior returning from a victorious and decisive battle. Shortly before this, newspapers had carried reports of Leon Trotsky’s flight to Mexico. We learned later that Hubert Herring, along with Nathan Straus of New York and a few more radical Protestants and Jews, whose names do not come to mind at this time, had been on a pilgrimage to the Mexican retreat of the late Jewish Communist Trotsky (real name Bronstein).
The enigmatic Dr. Edward A. Steiner then held a professorship in Grinnell College and was one of the principal speakers at the conference. Just what common purpose created a bond of fellowship between Straus, Herring, Steiner, Trotsky and company may very well be known by scrutinizing the points quoted from Herring’s speech. The air at Grinnell was charged with something indefinable and evil; with whisperings and sly meetings of small groups; with strange sayings from the lecture platform which had no place in the thinking of loyal Christian citizens of the United States.
It is significant that one of the main plebiscites sent out by the Council for Social Action for the signature of all pastors and church members was a pledge that they would never take up arms in defense of the United States, even in the case of attack by foreign country. So, the Council for Social Action “was lifted to the rank of a major society” for the purpose of selling a program of revolution to the churches. It is almost unbelievable that American Christians would give their approval to such treasonable acts against God and country.
Let no one think, however, that the Congregational-Christian Church is alone in permitting such treachery. We merely use it as an example of what has happened in many denominations, both large and small. At the recent Quadrennial Conference of Methodist Churches, the delegates demanded that the Methodist Federation for Social Action (or Service) drop the word “Methodist” and move out of the Methodist headquarters building. If memory serves us rightly, a similar move was attempted years ago, yet apparently no change was made to the organization’s policy. Many Methodist pastors and laymen are rising up against the Federation but, unless certain Marxist bishops are removed from seats of authority, there will probably be little change in the status of the offending organization.
As a matter of fact, the Federal Council of Churches --- now the National Council of the Churches of Christ --- has been dominated from its beginning by a strong, aggressive left-wing group that advocates the complete program of radical socialism. This minority presumes to speak for 320,000 Protestants, who have never authorized it to speak for them on any subject whatever. Nevertheless, this element always manages to take over the educational work of the churches and the publicity for everything concerning them. Consequently, a whole generation of Christian youth has been brought up under the baneful influence of socialism, internationalism, and poppycock racialism, disguised as social aspects of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. By such means the secret plotters provide a religious background to conceal their real goal of world government or, more accurately, international dictatorship.
Congregationalists too are now rising up to protest the trends and coercion of the Social Gospel, but, like Rip Van Winkle, they are twenty years behind the march of events. Twenty years for the sowing of tares; twenty years for them to blossom and bear their evil fruit --- and what will the harvest be?
In a recent brochure, “Congregationalism and the Social Gospel,” Howard Conn, Minister of Plymouth Congregational Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, writes:
“There is moral objection to the use of denominational funds for propaganda purposes. Such monies are raised from the membership-at-large, and ought not to be appropriated by any group to be used as propaganda in opposition to the convictions of many of the donors….
“The Council for Social Action should be prohibited from all lobbying activity, from testifying before Congressional subcommittees, and from attempting to speak in behalf of the Congregational Churches. Any such activities as these are a violation of our principle of the autonomy and independence of the local parishes. No person or group can speak responsibly or authoritatively for us….
“Therefore it is organically wrong for the CSA to speak in behalf of the Congregational Churches. It is wrong even when the Council tries to make clear that it speaks only for itself because the impression given is that this agency is in some way spokesman for a great body of one million Congregationalists. The distinctive genius of Congregationalists is that they will have such spokesman.”
In Matthew it states:
”Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (Matt. 7:15-16.)
At last the fruits of the Social Gospel are revealing the nature of its promoters. They stand exposed as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Their evil deeds are finally catching up with them. Irving E. Howard puts it this way: “The Social Gospel has been challenged to produce its intellectual and ethical credentials --- and it has none.”
Socialism never could have taken root in Christian society if it had not been propagated by the clergy. If church leaders had stood firmly on biblical principles and denounced the Social Gospel for the false teaching that it is, no other influence within or without could have induced Christian citizens to accept the doctrines and policies that threaten our nation today.
Some people, for instance, have been led to believe that the social aspect of Christ’s Gospel require the elimination of nationalism. But nothing could be farther from the truth. What, indeed, would be the consequences to the Gospel itself if national entity should be destroyed? One can find the answer to that question by noting what is happening to the churches in countries which have already lost their national character. A whole nation pays the price when its church leaders are sold a false bill of goods.
Walter R. Courtenay, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee, said in one of his sermons:
“I have a feeling that, if Jackson and Jefferson should visit the Democrats in Washington today, they would challenge about 85 percent of them to duels in the cherry orchards within the next twenty –four hours. I cannot imagine these true Americans feeling at home with the present administration or feeling that the wise men who are leading us to Statism and a ‘planned’ (Socialist) economy are Americans save by birth.”
We heartily agree with this statement. However, the picture is incomplete. If preachers like John Wesley, Whitefield, and Charles G. Finney should visit our churches today, they would challenge them to unfrock all socialistic clerics and boot them out of Christian pulpits. This would give our elected representatives in Washington the moral support they need to deal with the nation’s enemies. Too often they have felt the pressure of the church against them in their battle to hold the line for constitutional government and national sovereignty.
It is interesting to observe that the social gospelers --- those who graft the branch of rational theology on the vine of Marxism and loudly decry the evils of the profit motive --- are most eager to hold positions which make them the recipients of other people’s tainted profits. What will they do when the tithers and taxpayers no longer have any profits with which to support the parasite?
=============================
Articles from Biblical Treasures (Volume I) – C. R. Dickey
INTRODUCTION
The Staff at Destiny Publishers, having read all the articles written by the late C. R. Dickey (Christina R. Dickey) found in DESTINY Magazines from July 1938 to October 1967, received such a blessing from her writings that we wanted to share the information with all who are seeking God’s wonderful truths. We are hereby publishing all her articles in two volumes, which we believe you will find most inspiring and of genuine interest and value.
Her knowledge of the Scriptures was unbelievable so she must have had a very close association with her Lord, as she certainly became a champion for His cause.
Our late beloved editor, Howard B. Rand, realized her talent as he published many of articles in booklet form.
The reader should take into account the time element when each article was written, which was from the late thirties to the middle sixties. We found her articles to be up to the minute as though she had written them yesterday. Her writings on various subjects are backed up with Scripture verses, as well as with quotes from reliable sources, when making a point. From her writings, the Lord surely made use of her God-given talents.
Although we do not have any knowledge of her background, we do know that she was a Congregational minister. Her sermons given must have been of interest and value to her congregation. We are sure her articles contained in this book will do the same.
During the momentous years between 1920 and 1940 that strange phenomenon known as the Social Gospel reached the apex of its popularity. Many church conferences of that era were built largely around the Social Gospel as the main triumphant theme. Church dignitaries vied with one another in extolling its glories, all of them confident that its application would bring harmony and peace to the whole world within a few short years. The old Gospel of salvation by repentance, by faith in the efficacy of Christ’s death and resurrection, was laid aside like a worn-out garment. At last society had found a way to save itself.
A few of us detected sour notes in the theme. At that time we knew nothing about the background of the Social Gospel, or its ultimate intent, but instinctively we didn’t like its overtones and undertones. It just didn’t seem to ring true; consequently, it made us vaguely uneasy and left us cold. Soon we were seared by the withering scorn of seminary professors and leading pulpiteers for refusing to accept the teachings and aims of the Social Gospel as the highest expression of the will of Christ. So completely did our colleagues go all out for the newfangled salvation, that we sometimes wondered if novices like ourselves could possibly be right.
So, as pariahs, we sat apart and watched our church and other leading denominations organize various councils and committees to promote the Social Gospel. Queer revolutionary doctrines, alien alike to the spirit of the churches and to the spirit of America, were openly presented in ecclesiastical assemblies. A steady stream of mail began to flow from these councils and committees to the churches across the nation. Bulletins, newsletters, plebiscites, program suggestions, et cetera, deluged the churches; they were designed for the church school, and for every department including men, women and children. No group was neglected in this program of indoctrination. Speakers were sent out from the headquarters of these various Social Action councils, and churches were urged to use them when available.
Before considering the results of the Social Gospel, let us examine briefly its beginning and how it was handed down to us. In an excellent summary of this development under the title, “The Origins of the Social Gospel,” Irving E. Howard, minister of the Hope Congregational Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, writes:
“The Social Gospel was born in the optimistic atmosphere of the nineteenth century conquest of the vast American continent and its abundant natural resources. Man was rapidly becoming the master of nature, aided by the new mechanical inventions which were creating both an industrial and an intellectual revolution. Men everywhere were embracing two new congenial dogmas, that progress was inevitable and that man was essentially good.
“These two doctrines became the fundamentals of the Social Gospel and the impetus to a shift in faith from God to man, from eternity to time, from the individual to the group, individual conversions to social coercion, and from the church to the state. The main inspiration of the new movement was non-Christian, and from the beginning it drifted readily into doctrines increasingly removed from biblical faith.
“Both Unitarianism and Transcendentalism were a part of the blooming of this spirit. Ralph Waldo Emerson became a patron saint of the liberal Protestant, and Emerson’s dogma of an immanent God inherent in nature, and of man who partakes of God to the extent that he himself is divine, became an important dogma to the new movement.
“The pagan origin of the Social Gospel was from the beginning apparent in its readiness to sacrifice Christian faith to the new order. As early as 1873, for example, the Unitarian, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, published The Religion of Humanity, dismissing altogether any faith in God in favor of the new god, man. His challenge, although premature, revealed clearly that the drift was from God to man, and that the new dogma would be preserved through sacrifices in theological faith. Collective man and his society were the new god and the new Jerusalem.” (Faith and Freedom, May 1852.)
From these facts one can readily see how the pagan rationalistic philosophy, which flourished in European universities and theological schools in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, paved the way for the so-called Social Gospel. German historical criticism undermined belief in the authority of the Bible and opened the door to humanistic interpretations of religion and life. Prominent clergymen lost the biblical concept of individual responsibility and began to apply the collectivist idea to the interpretation of Christian teachings. Horace Bushnell, in 1847, published his book Christian Nurture, in which he applied John Locke’s theory of environmentalism to religious experience.
Concerning his work, Irving E. Howard says:
“Instead of converting the individual by evangelism, Bushnell argued, children should be molded by a religious environment. Apart from the obvious fact that children should be taught religion, this was the beginning of an idea that formed the core of the Social Gospel. Instead of the converted individual changing his environment, a changed environment was supposed to convert the individual. It is not difficult to conclude from this, the Social Gospel viewpoint, that the environment, not the individual, is responsible for human behavior.”
Twelve years later Darwin’s Origin of Species appeared and, it was thought by some theologians, put a prop under man’s revolt against the authority of the Scriptures. “The Puritan tradition leaned toward science,” comments the Reverend Howard on this point, “and by the 1880’s the majority of the clergy in this tradition had adjusted their thinking to Darwinism. They drew from the Darwinian theory the optimistic conclusion that an immanent God was at work in history evolving by slow process the Kingdom of God on earth. This furnished the Social Gospel with its philosophy of history.”
Next in the development of the Social Gospel was the idea of using the force of the state to bring about social righteousness. This idea was introduced at a conference at Saratoga, New York, in 1885, attended by such notables as Washington Gladden, Simon Patten, Edwin F. A. Seligman, Edmund J. James, John Bates Clark, Richard T. Ely, Andrew D. White and Woodrow Wilson. Some of these men “were fresh from graduate studies in Germany where they had become enamored with Bismarck’s use of the state in the area of human welfare.”
In 1889, Gladden spoke on “Christian Socialism” at the National Council of Congregational Churches. At that time he said:
“It begins to be clear that Christianity is not individualism. The Christian has encountered no deadlier foe during the last century than that individualistic philosophy which underlies the competitive system.”
Josiah Strong was another exponent of this “nameless drift away from individualism”, yet he said in Our Country, published in 1885, “Socialism attempts to solve the problem of suffering without eliminating the factor of sin.”
Thus we see how Socialism occupied the minds of men almost an hundred years ago. In 1889, an Episcopal minister, William Dwight Porter Bliss, was so influenced by Henry George’s Progress and Poverty and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward that he organized the Society of Christian Socialists consisting of about twenty ministers representing the Episcopalian, Congregational, Unitarian, Universalist, Baptist, Methodist and other denominations. A monthly journal published by the Reverend Bliss declared its purpose in the first issue as follows:
“Business itself today is wrong…it is based on competitive strife for profits….But this is the exact opposite of Christianity….We must change the system.”
Under the influence of the Baptist, Walter Rauschenbusch, and other intellectual lights at the dawn of the twentieth century, the Social Gospel began to take firm root in most of the large Protestant denominations. Official organizations were set up in the churches to advance the Social Gospel. One of the first was the Presbyterian Department of Church and Labor of the Board of Home Missions. In 1901, the National Council of the Congregational Church founded a Labor Committee. The Federation for Social Service was organized by the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) in 1907. The next year thirty-three denominations organized The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America and adopted a Social Creed much like that of the Methodists. 1912 saw the beginning of the interdenominational “Men and Religion Forward Movement,” which advocated government ownership of land, mines, water and other resources.
During the early 1920’s, there was a temporary reaction against socialism which led the “social gospelers ” to shift their emphasis from class conflict to international and interracial affairs. This was a period marked by countless peace organizations and spurious racial propaganda. The ineffective League of Nations was hailed by the Federal Council of Churches as “an international manifestation of the Kingdom of God.”
Then came the economic crash of 1929. It provided a most favorable opportunity for the spread of socialism. As Irving E. Howard aptly says, “During the depression, a reawakened Social Gospel found the time ripe for its message of sanctified covetousness.”
In 1934, delegates to the National Council of Congregational-Christian Churches established a Council for Social Action to carry out the program set forth in the following resolutions:
Therefore be it resolved: That we set ourselves to work toward:
1) The abolition of the profit system, the elimination of its incentives and habits, the legal forms by which it supports, and the moral ideas by which it justifies itself.
2) The inauguration of a thoroughly planned and organized social economy, which apply all our natural and human resources directly to the meeting of human needs, in pursuit of values, democratically chosen: which will,
a) Adjust production to measured consumption requirements, and maintain and extend social services --- health, education, recreation and insurance for all.
b) Eliminate private ownership in the means of production and distribution wherever such private ownership interferes with the success of a planned social economy, making profit unnecessary and impossible.
c) End unemployment, abolish poverty, enable maximum prevention of disease and crime, and stimulate the fullest development of the arts and sciences. Be it further resolved: That this Council urge that the members of our Fellowship increasingly seek to understand and cooperate with the forces and groups making for the above changes in our society.
The Council for Social Action was an extension of the functions of the Social Relations Commission. In “A Proposal for the General Council,” published in the Advance for May 10, 1934, Dr. Arthur E. Holt said:
“With these considerations in mind, it would seem appropriate that the Department of Social Relations be lifted to the rank of a major society in the denominational structure, taking rank alongside the societies which represent church establishment extension at home and abroad; that it be equipped with resources and personnel comparable to the magnitude of the demands upon it.”
Immediately the new Council for Social Action went into high gear, with the same personnel, organization and program as the old Social Relations Commission. Hubert C. Herring became director of the Council for Social Action; two of his assistants, Miss Helen G. Murray and Miss Katherine Terrill, were formerly coworkers in the Department of Social Relations.
It is important to know how these directors of the Council for Social Action propose to accomplish the ends outlined in the resolutions adopted by the General Council. Therefore, we shall let them speak for themselves on the subject. In a News Letter for April 1, 1934, put out by the Department of Social Relations, Miss Murray refers to a speech made by Mary Van Kleeck and discusses it in part as follows:
“In conclusion Miss Van Kleeck drew a picture of a classless society where there will be production for use instead of for profit, the only way out of our difficulties, using the Soviet Union as an example not only of how things must be managed, but also of how power is to be taken from the exploiting class. It is primarily a struggle of the workers against their exploiters, she maintained, and in this struggle Christian people should be on the side of the exploited --- not to give leadership which must be in the hands of the workers themselves, but to serve quite humbly under their direction.”
On June 23, 1934, Mr. Herring delivered an address to some nineteen hundred delegates to the General Council in Oberlin, Ohio, on this subject, “A Crusading Church in Days of Revolution.” His address was printed in full in the Advance for July 5th and 12th, 1934. It is so amazing, so revealing, that we quote at some length:
“It is revolution. The old patterns are torn up. Rugged individualism, the sacred right of capitalism, the vaunted right of a man to run his business as he sees fit without regard to the rights of society, are dead….
“I am not speaking as a protagonist of the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal represents a gallant and chivalrous effort to meet the challenge, and to save in orderly and peaceful fashion something out of the wreckage of our capitalistic order….
“I marvel at the logic of those who damn the New Deal….
“We cannot turn back. Roosevelt’s New Deal, halting and shifting as it may be, is a halfway house along the road which leads to a new ideal of the democratic state.
“Toward what are we to work? Is it the state in which a revived and controlled capitalism shall be enthroned? Is it the socialist state? I dislike labels, especially labels redolent of European conflict and experience. I am not afraid of the word socialism, nor are you. The ideas comprised by the word are the ideas which steadily push toward the fore….
“Assembled amid the ruins of a bankrupt society, we can be sure that the future holds a very different kind of state than any we have known. We may not like the idea of change. We may hanker for the old fireside and the old slippers, but the fireplace no longer draws, and the slippers are lost. Mr. Insull took them away from us.
“We can but conjecture as to the blueprint of the new society. It is dangerous to prophesy, but what, after all, are speeches for if not for conjecture and prophecy? Let me, then, suggest some of the directions in which we may be embarked.
“First, we are definitely headed toward the totalitarian state….The state will increasingly become supreme, and the rights of the individual will correspondingly decrease. In such a state, individual freedom will be disciplined and regimented. This may be distasteful, but it is inevitable….Social control of the means of production is a clear postulate of democracy….
“Second, we hope to move toward an increasingly democratic state….
“Third, we will move toward new motives. The profit motive rules supreme in the industrial era. The profit motive stands bankrupt, shivering and shaking as the chill winds of economic revolution bear down upon it. The day of profit is done, in any such sense as the word has been used during the past one hundred years. The assumption by the state of the principle of responsibility for the welfare of all its citizens carries the corollary of increased taxation. The makers of profit, on the one hand, create a national economic situation in which from ten to fifty million do not share in the profits. The state turns upon the profit-makers and cuts ten percent, twenty percent, seventy-five percent from their profits in order to equalize the load. This happens today. The next step is already apparent. That state says to the steel master, You must use more men, each man will work less hours, each man will receive more pay. The state goes on to say, You must cut your executive salaries, you must limit dividends, you must coordinate your production with your competitors. If this does not work --- this controlled and regimented capitalism --- the time will soon come when the state will say to the steel master, Your business is no longer yours; you will move out and the state will move in. You do not like the picture? It does not matter. The logic of events will transcend our likings.”
It must have been in the autumn of that same fateful year that the Mid-West Regional Meeting of Congregational Churches convened in Grinnell, Iowa. Mr. Herring arrived from the meeting somewhat travel-stained, having come directly from Mexico City, and was received with the acclaim of a warrior returning from a victorious and decisive battle. Shortly before this, newspapers had carried reports of Leon Trotsky’s flight to Mexico. We learned later that Hubert Herring, along with Nathan Straus of New York and a few more radical Protestants and Jews, whose names do not come to mind at this time, had been on a pilgrimage to the Mexican retreat of the late Jewish Communist Trotsky (real name Bronstein).
The enigmatic Dr. Edward A. Steiner then held a professorship in Grinnell College and was one of the principal speakers at the conference. Just what common purpose created a bond of fellowship between Straus, Herring, Steiner, Trotsky and company may very well be known by scrutinizing the points quoted from Herring’s speech. The air at Grinnell was charged with something indefinable and evil; with whisperings and sly meetings of small groups; with strange sayings from the lecture platform which had no place in the thinking of loyal Christian citizens of the United States.
It is significant that one of the main plebiscites sent out by the Council for Social Action for the signature of all pastors and church members was a pledge that they would never take up arms in defense of the United States, even in the case of attack by foreign country. So, the Council for Social Action “was lifted to the rank of a major society” for the purpose of selling a program of revolution to the churches. It is almost unbelievable that American Christians would give their approval to such treasonable acts against God and country.
Let no one think, however, that the Congregational-Christian Church is alone in permitting such treachery. We merely use it as an example of what has happened in many denominations, both large and small. At the recent Quadrennial Conference of Methodist Churches, the delegates demanded that the Methodist Federation for Social Action (or Service) drop the word “Methodist” and move out of the Methodist headquarters building. If memory serves us rightly, a similar move was attempted years ago, yet apparently no change was made to the organization’s policy. Many Methodist pastors and laymen are rising up against the Federation but, unless certain Marxist bishops are removed from seats of authority, there will probably be little change in the status of the offending organization.
As a matter of fact, the Federal Council of Churches --- now the National Council of the Churches of Christ --- has been dominated from its beginning by a strong, aggressive left-wing group that advocates the complete program of radical socialism. This minority presumes to speak for 320,000 Protestants, who have never authorized it to speak for them on any subject whatever. Nevertheless, this element always manages to take over the educational work of the churches and the publicity for everything concerning them. Consequently, a whole generation of Christian youth has been brought up under the baneful influence of socialism, internationalism, and poppycock racialism, disguised as social aspects of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. By such means the secret plotters provide a religious background to conceal their real goal of world government or, more accurately, international dictatorship.
Congregationalists too are now rising up to protest the trends and coercion of the Social Gospel, but, like Rip Van Winkle, they are twenty years behind the march of events. Twenty years for the sowing of tares; twenty years for them to blossom and bear their evil fruit --- and what will the harvest be?
In a recent brochure, “Congregationalism and the Social Gospel,” Howard Conn, Minister of Plymouth Congregational Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, writes:
“There is moral objection to the use of denominational funds for propaganda purposes. Such monies are raised from the membership-at-large, and ought not to be appropriated by any group to be used as propaganda in opposition to the convictions of many of the donors….
“The Council for Social Action should be prohibited from all lobbying activity, from testifying before Congressional subcommittees, and from attempting to speak in behalf of the Congregational Churches. Any such activities as these are a violation of our principle of the autonomy and independence of the local parishes. No person or group can speak responsibly or authoritatively for us….
“Therefore it is organically wrong for the CSA to speak in behalf of the Congregational Churches. It is wrong even when the Council tries to make clear that it speaks only for itself because the impression given is that this agency is in some way spokesman for a great body of one million Congregationalists. The distinctive genius of Congregationalists is that they will have such spokesman.”
In Matthew it states:
”Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (Matt. 7:15-16.)
At last the fruits of the Social Gospel are revealing the nature of its promoters. They stand exposed as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Their evil deeds are finally catching up with them. Irving E. Howard puts it this way: “The Social Gospel has been challenged to produce its intellectual and ethical credentials --- and it has none.”
Socialism never could have taken root in Christian society if it had not been propagated by the clergy. If church leaders had stood firmly on biblical principles and denounced the Social Gospel for the false teaching that it is, no other influence within or without could have induced Christian citizens to accept the doctrines and policies that threaten our nation today.
Some people, for instance, have been led to believe that the social aspect of Christ’s Gospel require the elimination of nationalism. But nothing could be farther from the truth. What, indeed, would be the consequences to the Gospel itself if national entity should be destroyed? One can find the answer to that question by noting what is happening to the churches in countries which have already lost their national character. A whole nation pays the price when its church leaders are sold a false bill of goods.
Walter R. Courtenay, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee, said in one of his sermons:
“I have a feeling that, if Jackson and Jefferson should visit the Democrats in Washington today, they would challenge about 85 percent of them to duels in the cherry orchards within the next twenty –four hours. I cannot imagine these true Americans feeling at home with the present administration or feeling that the wise men who are leading us to Statism and a ‘planned’ (Socialist) economy are Americans save by birth.”
We heartily agree with this statement. However, the picture is incomplete. If preachers like John Wesley, Whitefield, and Charles G. Finney should visit our churches today, they would challenge them to unfrock all socialistic clerics and boot them out of Christian pulpits. This would give our elected representatives in Washington the moral support they need to deal with the nation’s enemies. Too often they have felt the pressure of the church against them in their battle to hold the line for constitutional government and national sovereignty.
It is interesting to observe that the social gospelers --- those who graft the branch of rational theology on the vine of Marxism and loudly decry the evils of the profit motive --- are most eager to hold positions which make them the recipients of other people’s tainted profits. What will they do when the tithers and taxpayers no longer have any profits with which to support the parasite?
=============================
Articles from Biblical Treasures (Volume I) – C. R. Dickey
INTRODUCTION
The Staff at Destiny Publishers, having read all the articles written by the late C. R. Dickey (Christina R. Dickey) found in DESTINY Magazines from July 1938 to October 1967, received such a blessing from her writings that we wanted to share the information with all who are seeking God’s wonderful truths. We are hereby publishing all her articles in two volumes, which we believe you will find most inspiring and of genuine interest and value.
Her knowledge of the Scriptures was unbelievable so she must have had a very close association with her Lord, as she certainly became a champion for His cause.
Our late beloved editor, Howard B. Rand, realized her talent as he published many of articles in booklet form.
The reader should take into account the time element when each article was written, which was from the late thirties to the middle sixties. We found her articles to be up to the minute as though she had written them yesterday. Her writings on various subjects are backed up with Scripture verses, as well as with quotes from reliable sources, when making a point. From her writings, the Lord surely made use of her God-given talents.
Although we do not have any knowledge of her background, we do know that she was a Congregational minister. Her sermons given must have been of interest and value to her congregation. We are sure her articles contained in this book will do the same.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
DOUBLE Dog Dare Ya!
DOUBLE Dog Dare Ya!
Originally uploaded by rosethistleartworks
Xoie on a freezing day, goes for the double dog dare!
*amazingly . . . her tongue did not stick.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
LIMITING GOD article by CR Dickey
LIMITING GOD
Among the magnificent peaks of the Absaroka Mountains in Montana there are many beautiful lakes. Some of them are nestled in the very top of the peaks. Shimmering there in the shadows of clouds and trees, they create the illusion of having wafted out of the heavens through rainbow mist to crown the gleaming, snow-capped mountains with halos.
One of the most interesting of these pools in the sky is Mystic Lake. It is thousands of feet above sea level and men have not yet been able to plumb its depth. But men did become aware of the dormant energy hidden beneath the surface of its deep placid waters. In order to use that energy, hardy engineers hauled machinery up the mountain and built a power plant to harness and distribute the vast resources. Then they released water from the lake and sent it tumbling down the steep, rugged slope. Energy thus created now supplies electricity and irrigation for many square miles of fertile valleys below. The process continues year to year, but the lake itself remains calm, and its resources apparently undiminished, after meeting the requirements of numerous homes and fields.
One of the things about this great power plant which particularly fascinates an observer is the ease with which the unleashed forces of nature can be controlled by man’s mechanical skill. A foreman delights to show the visitor how quickly he can manipulate the mighty forces at his command; by touching an electric button, he sets levers in motion that shut off the power entirely, or release it in any quantity desired.
Mystic Lake is a miniature illustration of the unknown, limitless resources of God. Certainly man has not measured the power of God, nor has he ever used it except in a very limited way, although it is not God who does the limiting. Man will not apply himself to learning the secrets of tapping spiritual energy with the same determination and assurance of success that lead him to the mastery of dynamos and other methods of producing physical energy.
A few years ago Charles P. Steinmetz went to Wellesley Hills to visit Roger W. Babson. In the course of conversation, according to a report in Utica Observer-Dispatch, Babson asked his guest, “What line of research will see the greatest development during the next fifty years?”
The scientist was quiet for several minutes. “The great discoveries,” he answered finally, “will be made along spiritual lines. We scientific men have spent our lives studying physical forces. And now --- having made the most sensational discoveries in the history of the world --- we learn that our knowledge has not brought people happiness. Material things will never bring happiness. Scientists must now turn their laboratories over to the study of God, and prayer, and the spiritual forces. Here is the field where miracles are going to occur. Spiritual power is the greatest of the undeveloped powers, and has the greatest future.”
Coming from a man of science, that is a remarkable statement. Spiritual power is the greatest of the undeveloped powers, said Steinmetz. What an unconscious rebuke to all of us who confess to be followers of Christ! Why is spiritual power still undeveloped after nineteen hundred years of Christianity? The answer is couched in Psalm 78, verse 41:
”Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.”
They --- the people --- God’s covenant people --- limited Him. The entire Psalm reviews Israel’s mountain peak experiences for the very purpose of showing the many times and ways they limited the operation of God’s power and thwarted the consummation of His great plans for their future. The Psalmist reminds us:
”He [the Lord] established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments: And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.” (Ps. 78:5-8.)
Furthermore, the writer declared that the children of Ephraim had been defeated in the day of battle because:
”They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in His law; and forgat His works, and His wonders that He had shewed them.” (Ps. 78:10-11.)
When the covenant was confirmed at Mount Sinai, the people vowed, “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” The Psalmist testifies that even though God, being full of compassion, had marvelously kept His part of the contract, Israel was notoriously faithless except for brief periods of repentance after severe chastisement:
”When He slew them, then they sought Him and they returned and inquired early after God. And they remembered that God was their Rock, and the high God their Redeemer. Nevertheless they did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues. For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they stedfast in His covenant….Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.” (Ps. 78:34-41.)
It is obvious from a study of Psalm 78, and many other chapters, that obedience to God unlocks floodgates and releases His power through men; conversely, disobedience limits the power of God to energize, enlighten and bless mankind according to His expressed desire and purpose. We can find little to condone the failures of Israel in the distant past; and, if that be true, surely there is even less excuse for limiting God in these latter days when He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ and manifested His power through the Holy Spirit.
Human limitation of Divine power began in the early morning hours of recorded history. Limiting God was a cardinal sin in the earth long before the Israelites provoked and grieved Yahoveh in the Wilderness. It began in Eden, when our first parents dared to oppose the Divine Will, thereby frustrating the advancement of the original perfect order which its Creator had pronounced good. In so doing they shut off the glory of God’s illimitable power and consigned their posterity to “shallows and miseries.” We suffer the consequences to this day. On the other hand, the bow in the cloud has illumined the sky with prismatic beauty since the time of Noah, as a reminder of one man’s complete obedience to the holy purpose of God.
As individuals we continue to limit God. Notwithstanding all the compassionate efforts of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to show us the way, we have not recaptured the knowledge of utilizing the Father’s boundless resources. We accept the idea that “with God all things are possible,” forgetting that He permits us to limit Him by the exercise of our free wills. Each of us can shut out the Spirit of power from his own life, much as the engineer can control the volume of energy which flows from the mountain lake.
Doubtless, unbelief and disobedience are the most common obstacles to the development of spiritual power today, as in the time when the poet wrote Psalm 78 --- so little has the heart of man changed during the intervening centuries. Disobedience is usually the result of unbelief, since one rarely disobeys with willful intent until he first comes to doubt God’s Word. “All things are possible,” said Jesus, “to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23). What man has sounded the depth of that statement? Who is strong enough in faith and courage to test it fully? Jesus Himself is the only one who never limited God, yet He said to His disciples:
”He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father.” (John 14:12.)
There is one truth in the New Testament which is emphasized by all its inspired writers, and that is no man can appropriate spiritual life and power save through his acceptance of Jesus Christ as the resurrected Son of God. Again Jesus declared:
”Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” (Acts 1:8.)
Now upon whom does the Holy Spirit come? We know that He comes only upon disciples who have first confessed their faith in Christ as the Son of God. When Christ becomes the author and finisher of a man’s faith, he is then ready to receive power from on High --- power to become --- and power to overcome:
”As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name.” (John 1:12.)
“This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (I John 5:4-5.)
What amazing forces any humble man, woman or child can release from the throne of God by simply believing and doing all that the Bible teaches!
We are prone to reject spiritual forces because we cannot see and understand them. How inconsistent! One does not refuse to turn on his radio, although he can neither see nor explain the power which makes it work; one does not turn a deaf ear to the music of a great organ, even though he cannot see the wind and understand the electric energy which drives it so harmoniously through the pipes.
Someone has related a little story that illustrates the point. A tourist in Arizona accidentally backed his car off a bank into a deep hole. As there was nothing else to be done, he walked to the nearest garage for help. The place was close to a railroad track and, while the traveler was away, a work train came along with a big lifting crane. The train stopped and the crew let down the crane, picked up the automobile, lifted it out of the hole and set it in the road. Then the train went on its way. What was utterly impossible for one man was just a little amusement for the trainmen with their mighty steel lifter and giant locomotive. Soon the tourist returned and to his astonishment found his car in the road, ready to be driven off. He looked all around but could not imagine how it got there. He could see no signs of human hands, nor tracks of human feet anywhere; it looked miraculous, very mysterious to say the least. However, he accepted the miracle, got in his car and drove away rejoicing.
If we could fathom the tremendous forces which the Almighty commands, we would see that what we call miracles are but the operation of natural laws unrevealed to the mind of man. When we refuse to appropriate spiritual power because we cannot comprehend its laws, we are as foolish as the tourist would have been had he refused to ride in his car until he understood just how it got out of the ditch.
A God of love desires to bear the burdens of His people. He invites us to cast our cares upon Him. But we can’t turn them loose. We trudge through life weighted with all the imaginary woes of the past, present and future. We trust God to about the same extent as a well-meaning woman in the Texas Panhandle who, when asked if all varieties of crops had ever failed in the same year replied: “No --- but we are always expecting them to.”
As individuals we limit the desire of God to answer our prayers and bless us according to His gracious promises. Jesus taught:
I am the door: by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” (John 10:9.)
That is, he shall have access to the Lord’s abundant store house:
”Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened….What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them….Whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in My Name, I will do it.” (Matt. 7:7-8; Mark 11:24; John 14:13-14.)
Who can measure the scope of those munificent words? Who really dares to try them?
Blind Bartimaeus sat begging on the highway between Jericho and Jerusalem. Jesus passed that way and said to him:
”What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” (Mark 10:51a.)
Prompted by faith, newly born but undaunted, the blind man replied:
”Lord, that I might receive my sight.” (Mark 10:51b.)]/b]
If the average Christian of today stood before Jesus with the same affliction and opportunity as Bartimaeus, it is highly probable that the nearest he could come to the blind beggar’s faith would be to ask the Lord for a Seeing Eye dog. However, we honor God most by asking for the seemingly impossible things, especially if the motive is to exalt Him rather than to gratify our own selfish ends. James explains in his letter why we do not have the things we desire:
”Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume upon your lusts [spend it in your pleasures].” (James 4:2-3.)
Jesus could well say to us, as He said to the people of ancient Judea:
”O faithless and perverse generation.” (Matt. 17:17.)
As a nation we are limiting God. Even now we are shutting off the only power that can bring us the national blessings for which we sigh. After all, the nation is merely the individual multiplied, or “writ large,” as someone has said. What we are individually determines what our nation is to be. Just as God has promised to bear the burdens of the individual, so He has pledged to strengthen and uphold the nation that trusts in Him. Through the prophet God is speaking now to the nations of modern Israel:
”Hearken unto Me, O Jacob and Israel, My called; I am He; I am the first, I also am the last. Mine hand also hath laid the foundations of the earth, and My right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together. All ye, assemble yourselves, and hear….Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.” (Isa. 48:12-18.)
In these perilous days of war, countless hearts are in anguish because peace has fled from the earth. Is there no balm in Gilead? no remedy for our besetting sin? no way to enlist the power of God in behalf of Christian people? Yes, there is a remedy --- a way out. It was given to one of Israel’s great kings.
”The Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to Myself for an house of sacrifice. If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people; if My people, which are called by My Name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (II Chron. 7:12-14.)
Are the people of America ready and willing to meet these conditions? or will some future poet lament our departed glory in the words of the Psalmist --- “They limited the Holy One of Israel” (Ps. 78:41).
When the French went to the Isthmus of Panama to dig a canal, they took doctors, nurses and medicines, but fever took the doctors and nurses along with the workmen, so the French soon gave up the task. When Americans went to Panama, under the leadership of General Goethals, they too took doctors, nurses, and medicines; but they took also dredges for draining the swamps. By stopping the breeding of germ-carrying insects, the enemies of man were overcome and the canal was dug. In appreciation of his great achievement, someone has paid this tribute to General Goethals:
“A man went down to Panama
Where many a man had died,
To slit the sliding mountains
And lift the eternal tide;
A man stood up in Panama
And the mountains stood aside.”
When the redeemed of the Lord stand up in Israel and tap the secret springs of power from on High, then the fullness of God will flow into the nations with more happiness, beauty and progress than this old earth has ever known. Here, indeed is the field where miracles are going to occur, as the scientist predicted.
Articles from Biblical Treasures (Volume I) – C. R. Dickey
INTRODUCTION
The Staff at Destiny Publishers, having read all the articles written by the late C. R. Dickey (Christina R. Dickey) found in DESTINY Magazines from July 1938 to October 1967, received such a blessing from her writings that we wanted to share the information with all who are seeking God’s wonderful truths. We are hereby publishing all her articles in two volumes, which we believe you will find most inspiring and of genuine interest and value.
Her knowledge of the Scriptures was unbelievable so she must have had a very close association with her Lord, as she certainly became a champion for His cause.
Our late beloved editor, Howard B. Rand, realized her talent as he published many of articles in booklet form.
The reader should take into account the time element when each article was written, which was from the late thirties to the middle sixties. We found her articles to be up to the minute as though she had written them yesterday. Her writings on various subjects are backed up with Scripture verses, as well as with quotes from reliable sources, when making a point. From her writings, the Lord surely made use of her God-given talents.
Although we do not have any knowledge of her background, we do know that she was a Congregational minister. Her sermons given must have been of interest and value to her congregation. We are sure her articles contained in this book will do the same.
Among the magnificent peaks of the Absaroka Mountains in Montana there are many beautiful lakes. Some of them are nestled in the very top of the peaks. Shimmering there in the shadows of clouds and trees, they create the illusion of having wafted out of the heavens through rainbow mist to crown the gleaming, snow-capped mountains with halos.
One of the most interesting of these pools in the sky is Mystic Lake. It is thousands of feet above sea level and men have not yet been able to plumb its depth. But men did become aware of the dormant energy hidden beneath the surface of its deep placid waters. In order to use that energy, hardy engineers hauled machinery up the mountain and built a power plant to harness and distribute the vast resources. Then they released water from the lake and sent it tumbling down the steep, rugged slope. Energy thus created now supplies electricity and irrigation for many square miles of fertile valleys below. The process continues year to year, but the lake itself remains calm, and its resources apparently undiminished, after meeting the requirements of numerous homes and fields.
One of the things about this great power plant which particularly fascinates an observer is the ease with which the unleashed forces of nature can be controlled by man’s mechanical skill. A foreman delights to show the visitor how quickly he can manipulate the mighty forces at his command; by touching an electric button, he sets levers in motion that shut off the power entirely, or release it in any quantity desired.
Mystic Lake is a miniature illustration of the unknown, limitless resources of God. Certainly man has not measured the power of God, nor has he ever used it except in a very limited way, although it is not God who does the limiting. Man will not apply himself to learning the secrets of tapping spiritual energy with the same determination and assurance of success that lead him to the mastery of dynamos and other methods of producing physical energy.
A few years ago Charles P. Steinmetz went to Wellesley Hills to visit Roger W. Babson. In the course of conversation, according to a report in Utica Observer-Dispatch, Babson asked his guest, “What line of research will see the greatest development during the next fifty years?”
The scientist was quiet for several minutes. “The great discoveries,” he answered finally, “will be made along spiritual lines. We scientific men have spent our lives studying physical forces. And now --- having made the most sensational discoveries in the history of the world --- we learn that our knowledge has not brought people happiness. Material things will never bring happiness. Scientists must now turn their laboratories over to the study of God, and prayer, and the spiritual forces. Here is the field where miracles are going to occur. Spiritual power is the greatest of the undeveloped powers, and has the greatest future.”
Coming from a man of science, that is a remarkable statement. Spiritual power is the greatest of the undeveloped powers, said Steinmetz. What an unconscious rebuke to all of us who confess to be followers of Christ! Why is spiritual power still undeveloped after nineteen hundred years of Christianity? The answer is couched in Psalm 78, verse 41:
”Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.”
They --- the people --- God’s covenant people --- limited Him. The entire Psalm reviews Israel’s mountain peak experiences for the very purpose of showing the many times and ways they limited the operation of God’s power and thwarted the consummation of His great plans for their future. The Psalmist reminds us:
”He [the Lord] established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments: And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.” (Ps. 78:5-8.)
Furthermore, the writer declared that the children of Ephraim had been defeated in the day of battle because:
”They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in His law; and forgat His works, and His wonders that He had shewed them.” (Ps. 78:10-11.)
When the covenant was confirmed at Mount Sinai, the people vowed, “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” The Psalmist testifies that even though God, being full of compassion, had marvelously kept His part of the contract, Israel was notoriously faithless except for brief periods of repentance after severe chastisement:
”When He slew them, then they sought Him and they returned and inquired early after God. And they remembered that God was their Rock, and the high God their Redeemer. Nevertheless they did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues. For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they stedfast in His covenant….Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.” (Ps. 78:34-41.)
It is obvious from a study of Psalm 78, and many other chapters, that obedience to God unlocks floodgates and releases His power through men; conversely, disobedience limits the power of God to energize, enlighten and bless mankind according to His expressed desire and purpose. We can find little to condone the failures of Israel in the distant past; and, if that be true, surely there is even less excuse for limiting God in these latter days when He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ and manifested His power through the Holy Spirit.
Human limitation of Divine power began in the early morning hours of recorded history. Limiting God was a cardinal sin in the earth long before the Israelites provoked and grieved Yahoveh in the Wilderness. It began in Eden, when our first parents dared to oppose the Divine Will, thereby frustrating the advancement of the original perfect order which its Creator had pronounced good. In so doing they shut off the glory of God’s illimitable power and consigned their posterity to “shallows and miseries.” We suffer the consequences to this day. On the other hand, the bow in the cloud has illumined the sky with prismatic beauty since the time of Noah, as a reminder of one man’s complete obedience to the holy purpose of God.
As individuals we continue to limit God. Notwithstanding all the compassionate efforts of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to show us the way, we have not recaptured the knowledge of utilizing the Father’s boundless resources. We accept the idea that “with God all things are possible,” forgetting that He permits us to limit Him by the exercise of our free wills. Each of us can shut out the Spirit of power from his own life, much as the engineer can control the volume of energy which flows from the mountain lake.
Doubtless, unbelief and disobedience are the most common obstacles to the development of spiritual power today, as in the time when the poet wrote Psalm 78 --- so little has the heart of man changed during the intervening centuries. Disobedience is usually the result of unbelief, since one rarely disobeys with willful intent until he first comes to doubt God’s Word. “All things are possible,” said Jesus, “to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23). What man has sounded the depth of that statement? Who is strong enough in faith and courage to test it fully? Jesus Himself is the only one who never limited God, yet He said to His disciples:
”He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father.” (John 14:12.)
There is one truth in the New Testament which is emphasized by all its inspired writers, and that is no man can appropriate spiritual life and power save through his acceptance of Jesus Christ as the resurrected Son of God. Again Jesus declared:
”Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” (Acts 1:8.)
Now upon whom does the Holy Spirit come? We know that He comes only upon disciples who have first confessed their faith in Christ as the Son of God. When Christ becomes the author and finisher of a man’s faith, he is then ready to receive power from on High --- power to become --- and power to overcome:
”As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name.” (John 1:12.)
“This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (I John 5:4-5.)
What amazing forces any humble man, woman or child can release from the throne of God by simply believing and doing all that the Bible teaches!
We are prone to reject spiritual forces because we cannot see and understand them. How inconsistent! One does not refuse to turn on his radio, although he can neither see nor explain the power which makes it work; one does not turn a deaf ear to the music of a great organ, even though he cannot see the wind and understand the electric energy which drives it so harmoniously through the pipes.
Someone has related a little story that illustrates the point. A tourist in Arizona accidentally backed his car off a bank into a deep hole. As there was nothing else to be done, he walked to the nearest garage for help. The place was close to a railroad track and, while the traveler was away, a work train came along with a big lifting crane. The train stopped and the crew let down the crane, picked up the automobile, lifted it out of the hole and set it in the road. Then the train went on its way. What was utterly impossible for one man was just a little amusement for the trainmen with their mighty steel lifter and giant locomotive. Soon the tourist returned and to his astonishment found his car in the road, ready to be driven off. He looked all around but could not imagine how it got there. He could see no signs of human hands, nor tracks of human feet anywhere; it looked miraculous, very mysterious to say the least. However, he accepted the miracle, got in his car and drove away rejoicing.
If we could fathom the tremendous forces which the Almighty commands, we would see that what we call miracles are but the operation of natural laws unrevealed to the mind of man. When we refuse to appropriate spiritual power because we cannot comprehend its laws, we are as foolish as the tourist would have been had he refused to ride in his car until he understood just how it got out of the ditch.
A God of love desires to bear the burdens of His people. He invites us to cast our cares upon Him. But we can’t turn them loose. We trudge through life weighted with all the imaginary woes of the past, present and future. We trust God to about the same extent as a well-meaning woman in the Texas Panhandle who, when asked if all varieties of crops had ever failed in the same year replied: “No --- but we are always expecting them to.”
As individuals we limit the desire of God to answer our prayers and bless us according to His gracious promises. Jesus taught:
I am the door: by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” (John 10:9.)
That is, he shall have access to the Lord’s abundant store house:
”Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened….What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them….Whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in My Name, I will do it.” (Matt. 7:7-8; Mark 11:24; John 14:13-14.)
Who can measure the scope of those munificent words? Who really dares to try them?
Blind Bartimaeus sat begging on the highway between Jericho and Jerusalem. Jesus passed that way and said to him:
”What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” (Mark 10:51a.)
Prompted by faith, newly born but undaunted, the blind man replied:
”Lord, that I might receive my sight.” (Mark 10:51b.)]/b]
If the average Christian of today stood before Jesus with the same affliction and opportunity as Bartimaeus, it is highly probable that the nearest he could come to the blind beggar’s faith would be to ask the Lord for a Seeing Eye dog. However, we honor God most by asking for the seemingly impossible things, especially if the motive is to exalt Him rather than to gratify our own selfish ends. James explains in his letter why we do not have the things we desire:
”Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume upon your lusts [spend it in your pleasures].” (James 4:2-3.)
Jesus could well say to us, as He said to the people of ancient Judea:
”O faithless and perverse generation.” (Matt. 17:17.)
As a nation we are limiting God. Even now we are shutting off the only power that can bring us the national blessings for which we sigh. After all, the nation is merely the individual multiplied, or “writ large,” as someone has said. What we are individually determines what our nation is to be. Just as God has promised to bear the burdens of the individual, so He has pledged to strengthen and uphold the nation that trusts in Him. Through the prophet God is speaking now to the nations of modern Israel:
”Hearken unto Me, O Jacob and Israel, My called; I am He; I am the first, I also am the last. Mine hand also hath laid the foundations of the earth, and My right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together. All ye, assemble yourselves, and hear….Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.” (Isa. 48:12-18.)
In these perilous days of war, countless hearts are in anguish because peace has fled from the earth. Is there no balm in Gilead? no remedy for our besetting sin? no way to enlist the power of God in behalf of Christian people? Yes, there is a remedy --- a way out. It was given to one of Israel’s great kings.
”The Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to Myself for an house of sacrifice. If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people; if My people, which are called by My Name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (II Chron. 7:12-14.)
Are the people of America ready and willing to meet these conditions? or will some future poet lament our departed glory in the words of the Psalmist --- “They limited the Holy One of Israel” (Ps. 78:41).
When the French went to the Isthmus of Panama to dig a canal, they took doctors, nurses and medicines, but fever took the doctors and nurses along with the workmen, so the French soon gave up the task. When Americans went to Panama, under the leadership of General Goethals, they too took doctors, nurses, and medicines; but they took also dredges for draining the swamps. By stopping the breeding of germ-carrying insects, the enemies of man were overcome and the canal was dug. In appreciation of his great achievement, someone has paid this tribute to General Goethals:
“A man went down to Panama
Where many a man had died,
To slit the sliding mountains
And lift the eternal tide;
A man stood up in Panama
And the mountains stood aside.”
When the redeemed of the Lord stand up in Israel and tap the secret springs of power from on High, then the fullness of God will flow into the nations with more happiness, beauty and progress than this old earth has ever known. Here, indeed is the field where miracles are going to occur, as the scientist predicted.
Articles from Biblical Treasures (Volume I) – C. R. Dickey
INTRODUCTION
The Staff at Destiny Publishers, having read all the articles written by the late C. R. Dickey (Christina R. Dickey) found in DESTINY Magazines from July 1938 to October 1967, received such a blessing from her writings that we wanted to share the information with all who are seeking God’s wonderful truths. We are hereby publishing all her articles in two volumes, which we believe you will find most inspiring and of genuine interest and value.
Her knowledge of the Scriptures was unbelievable so she must have had a very close association with her Lord, as she certainly became a champion for His cause.
Our late beloved editor, Howard B. Rand, realized her talent as he published many of articles in booklet form.
The reader should take into account the time element when each article was written, which was from the late thirties to the middle sixties. We found her articles to be up to the minute as though she had written them yesterday. Her writings on various subjects are backed up with Scripture verses, as well as with quotes from reliable sources, when making a point. From her writings, the Lord surely made use of her God-given talents.
Although we do not have any knowledge of her background, we do know that she was a Congregational minister. Her sermons given must have been of interest and value to her congregation. We are sure her articles contained in this book will do the same.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Rainbow Sparkle Snow in Colorado
Rainbow Sparkle Snow in Colorado
Originally uploaded by rosethistleartworks
November snow on the high prairie pasture
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Arizona Crater from the window seat
Arizona Crater from the window seat
Originally uploaded by rosethistleartworks
I caught this crater just before it went under the wing of the plane. Pretty cool from that vantage point.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
X Marks the Spot
X Marks the Spot
Originally uploaded by rosethistleartworks
Going out to feed and there was the giant X in the sky. Had to take a picture, so I did.
Our almost 3 feet of snow in the almost never snowy October are starting to really melt in our warm 60 degree days now. Good moisture for next year in the pasture.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Goodly Heritage
Articles from Biblical Treasures (Volume I) – C. R. Dickey
A GOODLY HERITAGE
It has been well said that the founding of the United States of America was like “the divine imposition of hands.” Citizens of this great Republic can truly say with Israel’s renowned poet-king: “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage” (Ps. 16:6).
We are so accustomed to the bounty and blessings of our land that we do not realize what a glorious heritage we have, and how it stands out in contrast to all other nations. When our servicemen return from the far corners of the earth, they refer to their homecoming as “getting back to God’s country.” And so it is, for our heritage springs directly from the hand of God.
Speaking through Samuel the Prophet, God said:
“Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more.” (IISam. 7:10.)
The Israelites were already in Palestine when the prophecy was spoken and later were removed from that land; therefore, this appointed place was to be outside the bounds of the Holy Land, in regions then unknown, from which they would never be driven by their enemies. History and tradition lead us to believe that this planting was made in the Western European countries; in the Ephraim-Britain Commonwealth nations; and in the United States, the Manasseh branch of Joseph which settled in the “desolate heritages” of the New World.
Some two hundred years before the discovery of America, God was sifting the continent of Europe and selecting the stock with which to found our REPUBLIC, a New Order in the west. Concerning this phase of history, the late Dr. James S. McGaw said in one of his lectures:
“Martyr fires lighted the heavens, thousands marched to the dungeon and to death, but at God’s appointed moment Puritan, Huguenot, Hollander, Covenantor and Cavalier stood aboard their ships, God’s chosen people for the establishment of the great civil ideal. Like ancient Israel, He carried them across the sea, gave them the land and presided over their establishment as a nation.
“It was more than man who inspired the makers of the American Republic to imbed in the metal of the great Seal of the United States an ensign to the whole world --- THE NEW ORDER OF THE AGES. That statement was not placed in that most fundamental document, the Great Seal, merely for the embellishment of a beautiful design; nor as an oratorical flourish, but as the expression of the spirit, the genius and the prophetic destiny of the nation. It is our confident belief that God placed that statement there as the status of the nation, both for the time that then was, and for the time that now is, breaking upon the world.”
Two profound principles guided the founding of our constitutional government. The first is written into the Preamble to the Constitution: “We the People of the United States…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The second principle is a corollary of the governed.” These two principles embodied in the government of a nation “turned the tide of human history and lifted up on the earth a beacon light of civil liberty that became the ideal and the hope of all enslaved lands.”
Commenting on the significance of these two basic principles some years ago, before the issues were as clearly drawn as they are today, Dr. McGaw said:
“And, if you will receive it, upon those two statements the tide of the world history is now turning. The fact is, they will constitute the main issue in the closing phase of the great war that began in 1914. Perhaps not even the profoundest students of the Israel truth have noted that the real human issue in the coming conflict with GOG, of Ezekiel’s 38th and 38th chapters, will be between two great powers claiming the same ideals of blessing to mankind --- the government of the people, established on American soil, and the Satanic counterfeit, established in Russia.”
Ours is a heritage of great material abundance. Continued and full abundance, however, is conditional; it depends upon cooperation with the Divine will. God promises material blessings to His people as a whole so long as they obey His instructions.”
“If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time; and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.” (Lev. 26:3-5.)
Addressing all Israel, Joshua stated the law of material abundance as follows:
“This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” (Joshua 1:8.)
Prosperity depends also on personal effort and thrift. The wife of a certain Indian chieftain, who had fallen upon idle habits, one day lifted the dish-cover at dinner and revealed a pair of spurs --- a sign that he must ride and hunt for his next meal. Instinctively the Indian woman knew that man has no right to eat unless he works. This basic principle is ignored today in the profligate give-away programs of inept government planners. Nevertheless, it is written in the Scriptures:
“The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat….Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall suffer hunger….The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.” (Prov. 13:4; 19:15; 20:4.)
“He that hath a trade hath an estate, and he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honour; but then the trade must be worked at and the calling followed. If we are industrious, we shall never starve, for at the working man’s house hunger looks in but dares not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable enter, for the industry pays debts while despair increaseth them.”
It was Thomas Jefferson who said:
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, the people will be happy.”
Little did he think that by 1954 “liberal” politicians posing as Jeffersonian Democrats, aided by like minded Republicans, would have thrifty American citizens working about three months of each year for the government in order to reward irresponsibles at home and abroad for not working.
Spiritual blessings likewise are the fruits of faith in God and obedience to His commands. More than everything else, citizens of this country need to realize the influence of the Christian faith in the development of national character and strength. Truly we have a goodly heritage of spiritual abundance. Nothing exemplifies more effectively the spiritual quality of our nation’s birth than the following prayer uttered by George Washington:
“Almighty God, who has given us this good land for our heritage, we humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will.
“Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning and pure manners.
“Save us from violence, discord and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way.
“Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought out of many kindreds and tongues.
“Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be peace and justice at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth.
“In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail.
“All of which we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
Every American worthy of his citizenship ought to make that remarkable prayer his own day after day. It begins with an acknowledgment that our good land is a heritage from the hand of Almighty God; and with a plea that we may prove ourselves worthy of it by joyfully doing His will. The next petition is that our land be blessed “with honorable industry, sound learning and pure manners.” A volume could be written on America’s present need for these virtues. For to be slack in regard to any one or all of them leads to the evils of the following sentence ---“violence, discord, confusion, pride and arrogancy.”
Sound learning has its origin in the Word of God. Scriptural teachings and faith in Jesus Christ became the cornerstone of our national ideals, laws, and institutions. The Bible was a textbook in early American schools. Its influence was reflected in civil and religious liberty, such as had not been known since the days when Israel lived under the laws of God as administered by Moses and King David. The little schools and churches which nestled in scattered villages were mighty factors in molding the manners and morals of the Republic.
We may well heed today a General Order which was issued by General George Washington in New York, July 1776. It reads:
“The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice heretofore little known in an American army, is growing into fashion. He hopes the officers will, by example, as well as influence, endeavor to check it, and that both they and the men will reflect, that we can have little hope of the blessings of Heaven on our arms, if we insult it by our impiety and folly. Added to this, it is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.”
In all humility, the revered father of our country admitted in his prayer that only the Lord God Himself can “defend our liberties” and give the spirit of wisdom to those in authority. Note that he says, “those to whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government.” What a noble concept of public service as a sacred trust, a responsibility under God! As Washington conceived it, government officials have a two fold obligation: “That there may be peace and justice at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth.”
Here is a recognition of the real function and limitations of federal government. The jurisdiction of government officials ends with securing “peace and justice at home.” It is their place to see that the business and social relations of the people proceed in an atmosphere of tranquility and justice. They have no right to regulate business and set the standards for society according to their own pattern without regard to the will of the people. An illustration of the absurdities which grow out of bureaucratic orders was highlighted by the Houston Post in September 1953:
“The Gettysburg Address contained 266 words.
“The Ten Commandments contained 297 words.
“The Declaration of Independence contained 300 words.
“An OPS order to Reduce the Price of Cabbage contained 26, 911 words.”
Let it be said again that, in the mind of George Washington, the jurisdiction of our government officials ends “at home.” It is not the prerogative of those vested with authority in the government of the United States to meddle in the affairs of other countries. The first President of the Republic was unalterably opposed to what he called “entangling alliances” with other nations. It is permissible to give friendly guidance from the home base when requested to do so; but it is intolerable presumption to move in on other nations and take over their internal affairs, as our State Department did in China, when it forced the Nationalist government to surrender to the Communists. Only time can reveal the disaster that is yet to come upon America, and Christian people everywhere, because our great nation is now trapped and involved in dangerous situations all over the world.
Actually Christian nations have one main duty to perform in the service of other countries. Washington saw it clearly when he said in his prayer, “and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth.” That is scriptural. It has been Israel’s mission from her beginning. Our part --- and is a responsibility resting upon both Church and State --- is to so demonstrate the benefits of government under the Divine Law and Spirit of Christ so that the peoples of other lands, seeing our good works and blessings, will be persuaded to seek the Lord in righteousness and join us in praising His Holy Name:
“For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” (IIPet. 1:11.)
“In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail. All of which we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” Thus the prayer ends in the name of the Lord Jesus. It is an authentic Christian prayer. Since the inauguration of the New Covenant, there has been only one way for a prayer to reach God, and that is through Jesus Christ, the Mediator. Nevertheless, at the present time, out of deference to unbelievers, and particularly to non-Christians, most prayers spoken on public occasions omit the Name that is above every name. Such prayers are futile words. God is not impressed by petitions that deliberately ignore the blessed Son and Saviour.
In Barnes’ history we find this statement:
“Who can tell how much of the subsequent brilliant success of the American armies was in answer to prayers of the American General at Valley Forge? To the latest times it will and should be a subject of the deepest interest that the independence of our country was laid, not only in valor and patriotism and wisdom, but in prayer. The example of Washington will rebuke the warrior or the statesman who never supplicates the blessing of God on his country. It will be encouragement for him who prays for its welfare and its deliverance from danger.”
Bishop James E. Freeman said of the fathers who built the Republic:
“They trusted in something more than statesmanship, something more than strength of arms, something more than the genius and cunning of the trader; they believed that only as the nation served with fidelity the God in whom they trusted, and maintained those virtues that guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, would it continue stable and secure.”
These men had a deep reverence for holy things and recognized the fact that all virtue and security resides in obedience to God’s laws. Bishop Freeman adds:
“This [recognition] is wrought into every state paper and characterizes every action of this noble band. The gulf that divides us from this generation of heroic men may seem wide and deep, but adherence to the high ideals and purposes that marked their conduct and devotion to the state is our surest warrant of security, peace, and continuing power. The recognition of the immutable laws of God, unfailing allegiance to those fundamental principles of life given to mankind by Jesus Christ, these we may not ignore or neglect, except to our peril.
“Nothing alien to our traditions may assume to govern or control us in our course or determine for us our relation to problems at home or abroad. This is no affirmation of a policy that is insular in its designs and aims, it is adherence to those institutions, ideals, and purposes that are inherent in our system and peculiar to our conception of government. At such a time as this the guiding hand and pervading spirit of Washington are sorely needed in our life. No new and fantastic conceits born of a passion for change must stay our ship of state of deflect it from its chosen destiny….We repeat, with increased emphasis --- no unhallowed or alien hands shall deflect us from our course.”
In these days of cynicism, materialism and radicalism, it is considered a mark of distinction to belittle love of God and native land. “Beware of the man who scoffs at his own country. Beware of the man who jeers at patriotism.” It was love of God and country that sent Washington forth as a pioneer and patriot. This devotion elevated him to the Presidency and made him “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countryman.”
In a sermon preached on the 200th Anniversary of Washington’s birth, Dr. William Carter said:
“His was a national patriotism. Others, today, boast of their Internationalism. They are the kind of Internationalists who seem to think their own country always wrong and other countries always right. He rejoiced in the progress of other nations along righteous lines, knowing that all such progress led to the success of other nations but, as a patriot should, he loved his own country best….It is such patriotism as this that needs a new birth today!”
Happy is the man who can say with a thankful heart --- I am a citizen of the United States of America; yea, I have a goodly heritage.
====================================================
INTRODUCTION
The Staff at Destiny Publishers, having read all the articles written by the late C. R. Dickey (Christina R. Dickey) found in DESTINY Magazines from July 1938 to October 1967, received such a blessing from her writings that we wanted to share the information with all who are seeking God’s wonderful truths. We are hereby publishing all her articles in two volumes, which we believe you will find most inspiring and of genuine interest and value.
Her knowledge of the Scriptures was unbelievable so she must have had a very close association with her Lord, as she certainly became a champion for His cause.
Our late beloved editor, Howard B. Rand, realized her talent as he published many of articles in booklet form.
The reader should take into account the time element when each article was written, which was from the late thirties to the middle sixties. We found her articles to be up to the minute as though she had written them yesterday. Her writings on various subjects are backed up with Scripture verses, as well as with quotes from reliable sources, when making a point. From her writings, the Lord surely made use of her God-given talents.
Although we do not have any knowledge of her background, we do know that she was a Congregational minister. Her sermons given must have been of interest and value to her congregation. We are sure her articles contained in this book will do the same.
===========================================================
A GOODLY HERITAGE
It has been well said that the founding of the United States of America was like “the divine imposition of hands.” Citizens of this great Republic can truly say with Israel’s renowned poet-king: “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage” (Ps. 16:6).
We are so accustomed to the bounty and blessings of our land that we do not realize what a glorious heritage we have, and how it stands out in contrast to all other nations. When our servicemen return from the far corners of the earth, they refer to their homecoming as “getting back to God’s country.” And so it is, for our heritage springs directly from the hand of God.
Speaking through Samuel the Prophet, God said:
“Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more.” (IISam. 7:10.)
The Israelites were already in Palestine when the prophecy was spoken and later were removed from that land; therefore, this appointed place was to be outside the bounds of the Holy Land, in regions then unknown, from which they would never be driven by their enemies. History and tradition lead us to believe that this planting was made in the Western European countries; in the Ephraim-Britain Commonwealth nations; and in the United States, the Manasseh branch of Joseph which settled in the “desolate heritages” of the New World.
Some two hundred years before the discovery of America, God was sifting the continent of Europe and selecting the stock with which to found our REPUBLIC, a New Order in the west. Concerning this phase of history, the late Dr. James S. McGaw said in one of his lectures:
“Martyr fires lighted the heavens, thousands marched to the dungeon and to death, but at God’s appointed moment Puritan, Huguenot, Hollander, Covenantor and Cavalier stood aboard their ships, God’s chosen people for the establishment of the great civil ideal. Like ancient Israel, He carried them across the sea, gave them the land and presided over their establishment as a nation.
“It was more than man who inspired the makers of the American Republic to imbed in the metal of the great Seal of the United States an ensign to the whole world --- THE NEW ORDER OF THE AGES. That statement was not placed in that most fundamental document, the Great Seal, merely for the embellishment of a beautiful design; nor as an oratorical flourish, but as the expression of the spirit, the genius and the prophetic destiny of the nation. It is our confident belief that God placed that statement there as the status of the nation, both for the time that then was, and for the time that now is, breaking upon the world.”
Two profound principles guided the founding of our constitutional government. The first is written into the Preamble to the Constitution: “We the People of the United States…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The second principle is a corollary of the governed.” These two principles embodied in the government of a nation “turned the tide of human history and lifted up on the earth a beacon light of civil liberty that became the ideal and the hope of all enslaved lands.”
Commenting on the significance of these two basic principles some years ago, before the issues were as clearly drawn as they are today, Dr. McGaw said:
“And, if you will receive it, upon those two statements the tide of the world history is now turning. The fact is, they will constitute the main issue in the closing phase of the great war that began in 1914. Perhaps not even the profoundest students of the Israel truth have noted that the real human issue in the coming conflict with GOG, of Ezekiel’s 38th and 38th chapters, will be between two great powers claiming the same ideals of blessing to mankind --- the government of the people, established on American soil, and the Satanic counterfeit, established in Russia.”
Ours is a heritage of great material abundance. Continued and full abundance, however, is conditional; it depends upon cooperation with the Divine will. God promises material blessings to His people as a whole so long as they obey His instructions.”
“If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time; and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.” (Lev. 26:3-5.)
Addressing all Israel, Joshua stated the law of material abundance as follows:
“This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” (Joshua 1:8.)
Prosperity depends also on personal effort and thrift. The wife of a certain Indian chieftain, who had fallen upon idle habits, one day lifted the dish-cover at dinner and revealed a pair of spurs --- a sign that he must ride and hunt for his next meal. Instinctively the Indian woman knew that man has no right to eat unless he works. This basic principle is ignored today in the profligate give-away programs of inept government planners. Nevertheless, it is written in the Scriptures:
“The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat….Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall suffer hunger….The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.” (Prov. 13:4; 19:15; 20:4.)
“He that hath a trade hath an estate, and he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honour; but then the trade must be worked at and the calling followed. If we are industrious, we shall never starve, for at the working man’s house hunger looks in but dares not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable enter, for the industry pays debts while despair increaseth them.”
It was Thomas Jefferson who said:
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, the people will be happy.”
Little did he think that by 1954 “liberal” politicians posing as Jeffersonian Democrats, aided by like minded Republicans, would have thrifty American citizens working about three months of each year for the government in order to reward irresponsibles at home and abroad for not working.
Spiritual blessings likewise are the fruits of faith in God and obedience to His commands. More than everything else, citizens of this country need to realize the influence of the Christian faith in the development of national character and strength. Truly we have a goodly heritage of spiritual abundance. Nothing exemplifies more effectively the spiritual quality of our nation’s birth than the following prayer uttered by George Washington:
“Almighty God, who has given us this good land for our heritage, we humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will.
“Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning and pure manners.
“Save us from violence, discord and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way.
“Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought out of many kindreds and tongues.
“Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be peace and justice at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth.
“In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail.
“All of which we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
Every American worthy of his citizenship ought to make that remarkable prayer his own day after day. It begins with an acknowledgment that our good land is a heritage from the hand of Almighty God; and with a plea that we may prove ourselves worthy of it by joyfully doing His will. The next petition is that our land be blessed “with honorable industry, sound learning and pure manners.” A volume could be written on America’s present need for these virtues. For to be slack in regard to any one or all of them leads to the evils of the following sentence ---“violence, discord, confusion, pride and arrogancy.”
Sound learning has its origin in the Word of God. Scriptural teachings and faith in Jesus Christ became the cornerstone of our national ideals, laws, and institutions. The Bible was a textbook in early American schools. Its influence was reflected in civil and religious liberty, such as had not been known since the days when Israel lived under the laws of God as administered by Moses and King David. The little schools and churches which nestled in scattered villages were mighty factors in molding the manners and morals of the Republic.
We may well heed today a General Order which was issued by General George Washington in New York, July 1776. It reads:
“The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice heretofore little known in an American army, is growing into fashion. He hopes the officers will, by example, as well as influence, endeavor to check it, and that both they and the men will reflect, that we can have little hope of the blessings of Heaven on our arms, if we insult it by our impiety and folly. Added to this, it is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.”
In all humility, the revered father of our country admitted in his prayer that only the Lord God Himself can “defend our liberties” and give the spirit of wisdom to those in authority. Note that he says, “those to whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government.” What a noble concept of public service as a sacred trust, a responsibility under God! As Washington conceived it, government officials have a two fold obligation: “That there may be peace and justice at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth.”
Here is a recognition of the real function and limitations of federal government. The jurisdiction of government officials ends with securing “peace and justice at home.” It is their place to see that the business and social relations of the people proceed in an atmosphere of tranquility and justice. They have no right to regulate business and set the standards for society according to their own pattern without regard to the will of the people. An illustration of the absurdities which grow out of bureaucratic orders was highlighted by the Houston Post in September 1953:
“The Gettysburg Address contained 266 words.
“The Ten Commandments contained 297 words.
“The Declaration of Independence contained 300 words.
“An OPS order to Reduce the Price of Cabbage contained 26, 911 words.”
Let it be said again that, in the mind of George Washington, the jurisdiction of our government officials ends “at home.” It is not the prerogative of those vested with authority in the government of the United States to meddle in the affairs of other countries. The first President of the Republic was unalterably opposed to what he called “entangling alliances” with other nations. It is permissible to give friendly guidance from the home base when requested to do so; but it is intolerable presumption to move in on other nations and take over their internal affairs, as our State Department did in China, when it forced the Nationalist government to surrender to the Communists. Only time can reveal the disaster that is yet to come upon America, and Christian people everywhere, because our great nation is now trapped and involved in dangerous situations all over the world.
Actually Christian nations have one main duty to perform in the service of other countries. Washington saw it clearly when he said in his prayer, “and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth.” That is scriptural. It has been Israel’s mission from her beginning. Our part --- and is a responsibility resting upon both Church and State --- is to so demonstrate the benefits of government under the Divine Law and Spirit of Christ so that the peoples of other lands, seeing our good works and blessings, will be persuaded to seek the Lord in righteousness and join us in praising His Holy Name:
“For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” (IIPet. 1:11.)
“In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail. All of which we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” Thus the prayer ends in the name of the Lord Jesus. It is an authentic Christian prayer. Since the inauguration of the New Covenant, there has been only one way for a prayer to reach God, and that is through Jesus Christ, the Mediator. Nevertheless, at the present time, out of deference to unbelievers, and particularly to non-Christians, most prayers spoken on public occasions omit the Name that is above every name. Such prayers are futile words. God is not impressed by petitions that deliberately ignore the blessed Son and Saviour.
In Barnes’ history we find this statement:
“Who can tell how much of the subsequent brilliant success of the American armies was in answer to prayers of the American General at Valley Forge? To the latest times it will and should be a subject of the deepest interest that the independence of our country was laid, not only in valor and patriotism and wisdom, but in prayer. The example of Washington will rebuke the warrior or the statesman who never supplicates the blessing of God on his country. It will be encouragement for him who prays for its welfare and its deliverance from danger.”
Bishop James E. Freeman said of the fathers who built the Republic:
“They trusted in something more than statesmanship, something more than strength of arms, something more than the genius and cunning of the trader; they believed that only as the nation served with fidelity the God in whom they trusted, and maintained those virtues that guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, would it continue stable and secure.”
These men had a deep reverence for holy things and recognized the fact that all virtue and security resides in obedience to God’s laws. Bishop Freeman adds:
“This [recognition] is wrought into every state paper and characterizes every action of this noble band. The gulf that divides us from this generation of heroic men may seem wide and deep, but adherence to the high ideals and purposes that marked their conduct and devotion to the state is our surest warrant of security, peace, and continuing power. The recognition of the immutable laws of God, unfailing allegiance to those fundamental principles of life given to mankind by Jesus Christ, these we may not ignore or neglect, except to our peril.
“Nothing alien to our traditions may assume to govern or control us in our course or determine for us our relation to problems at home or abroad. This is no affirmation of a policy that is insular in its designs and aims, it is adherence to those institutions, ideals, and purposes that are inherent in our system and peculiar to our conception of government. At such a time as this the guiding hand and pervading spirit of Washington are sorely needed in our life. No new and fantastic conceits born of a passion for change must stay our ship of state of deflect it from its chosen destiny….We repeat, with increased emphasis --- no unhallowed or alien hands shall deflect us from our course.”
In these days of cynicism, materialism and radicalism, it is considered a mark of distinction to belittle love of God and native land. “Beware of the man who scoffs at his own country. Beware of the man who jeers at patriotism.” It was love of God and country that sent Washington forth as a pioneer and patriot. This devotion elevated him to the Presidency and made him “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countryman.”
In a sermon preached on the 200th Anniversary of Washington’s birth, Dr. William Carter said:
“His was a national patriotism. Others, today, boast of their Internationalism. They are the kind of Internationalists who seem to think their own country always wrong and other countries always right. He rejoiced in the progress of other nations along righteous lines, knowing that all such progress led to the success of other nations but, as a patriot should, he loved his own country best….It is such patriotism as this that needs a new birth today!”
Happy is the man who can say with a thankful heart --- I am a citizen of the United States of America; yea, I have a goodly heritage.
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INTRODUCTION
The Staff at Destiny Publishers, having read all the articles written by the late C. R. Dickey (Christina R. Dickey) found in DESTINY Magazines from July 1938 to October 1967, received such a blessing from her writings that we wanted to share the information with all who are seeking God’s wonderful truths. We are hereby publishing all her articles in two volumes, which we believe you will find most inspiring and of genuine interest and value.
Her knowledge of the Scriptures was unbelievable so she must have had a very close association with her Lord, as she certainly became a champion for His cause.
Our late beloved editor, Howard B. Rand, realized her talent as he published many of articles in booklet form.
The reader should take into account the time element when each article was written, which was from the late thirties to the middle sixties. We found her articles to be up to the minute as though she had written them yesterday. Her writings on various subjects are backed up with Scripture verses, as well as with quotes from reliable sources, when making a point. From her writings, the Lord surely made use of her God-given talents.
Although we do not have any knowledge of her background, we do know that she was a Congregational minister. Her sermons given must have been of interest and value to her congregation. We are sure her articles contained in this book will do the same.
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Thursday, August 27, 2009
Communist Flag to fly at White House 09/20/09
http://www.redcounty.com/white-house-fly-communist-chinese-flag?taxonomy=24
White House to fly Communist Chinese Flag
By Dr. Richard Swier 08/27/09 08:30 AM EDT 2 Comments
According to ChinaDaily.com:
The national flag of the People's Republic of China (PRC) will be hoisted at the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on September 20, media reported Sunday.
Chinese associations in the United States had applied to hold a ceremony in front of the US President’s residence to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of PRC.
Chen Ronghua, chairman of Fujian Association of the United States, told reporters that their application was approved not only because of the sound Sino-US relations but also because China is a responsible country.
"Many Americans admire China due to the success of last year’s Beijing Olympics," said Chen.
More than 1,000 people will attend the ceremony and the performances held after it, according to Zhao Luqun, who will direct the performances.
Zhao said the performances will demonstrate the friendship, magnanimous spirit and kindness of modern Chinese people.
Gee, I spent twenty-three years in the U.S. Army fighting the Communists. I faced the Russians in Europe, American soldiers fought the Communist Chinese in Korea, I fought Communist North Vietnam, which was supported by both the U.S.S.R. and Communist China.
Celebrating Americans of Chinese decent if one thing. Celebrating Communism is another. Now our President will hoist the Communist flag over the White House. How fitting and in sync with his political belief system. I can hardly wait for President Obama's May Day parade.
White House to fly Communist Chinese Flag
By Dr. Richard Swier 08/27/09 08:30 AM EDT 2 Comments
According to ChinaDaily.com:
The national flag of the People's Republic of China (PRC) will be hoisted at the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on September 20, media reported Sunday.
Chinese associations in the United States had applied to hold a ceremony in front of the US President’s residence to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of PRC.
Chen Ronghua, chairman of Fujian Association of the United States, told reporters that their application was approved not only because of the sound Sino-US relations but also because China is a responsible country.
"Many Americans admire China due to the success of last year’s Beijing Olympics," said Chen.
More than 1,000 people will attend the ceremony and the performances held after it, according to Zhao Luqun, who will direct the performances.
Zhao said the performances will demonstrate the friendship, magnanimous spirit and kindness of modern Chinese people.
Gee, I spent twenty-three years in the U.S. Army fighting the Communists. I faced the Russians in Europe, American soldiers fought the Communist Chinese in Korea, I fought Communist North Vietnam, which was supported by both the U.S.S.R. and Communist China.
Celebrating Americans of Chinese decent if one thing. Celebrating Communism is another. Now our President will hoist the Communist flag over the White House. How fitting and in sync with his political belief system. I can hardly wait for President Obama's May Day parade.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Raccoon mom and four babies
Raccoon mom and four babies
Originally uploaded by rosethistleartworks
I'm just about to finally go to sleep and I hear a ruckus outside. I took this picture through our screen door of a mama raccoon and her four babies rummaging through our crushed cans.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Double Rainbow over a train in the country 070309
Double Rainbow over a train in the country 070309
Originally uploaded by rosethistleartworks
We had an amazing thunder/hail storm yesterday out here on the eastern plains of Colorado. Then, this beautiful full double rainbow with so many colors. It was amazing.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Full Double Rainbow over a little church
Yesterday, was a rough day. But, then this full double rainbow appeared in a light rain. It was beautiful. I had to splice photos together to get the full rainbow. Hopefully, the magnificence of the rainbow comes through, though.
Genesis 9:8 And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,
9:9 And I, behold, I establish My convenant with you, and with your seed after you;
9:10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl , of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.
9:11 And I will establish My covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth."
9:12 And God said, "This is the token of the convenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations;
9:13 I do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth.
9:14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud;
9:15 And I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
9:16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
9:17 And God said unto Noah, "This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between Me and all flesh that is upon the earth."
Genesis 9:8 And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,
9:9 And I, behold, I establish My convenant with you, and with your seed after you;
9:10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl , of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.
9:11 And I will establish My covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth."
9:12 And God said, "This is the token of the convenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations;
9:13 I do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth.
9:14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud;
9:15 And I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
9:16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
9:17 And God said unto Noah, "This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between Me and all flesh that is upon the earth."
Friday, May 22, 2009
Dr. Alan Keyes
This is video from 1996. I regret not getting to know Dr. Alan Keyes sooner. I would most definitely have voted for him. Maybe that's what scares the people who pulled this travesty on him?
Monday, May 18, 2009
Colorado Stormy Sunset May 15, 2009
Colorado Stormy Sunset 051809
Originally uploaded by rosethistleartworks
A storm is rolling in from the west. Hopefully it will bring some rain to the crops and pastures out here. It sure makes a beautiful sunset!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Yak Fiber!!! aka Quiviut
Yay! Today I got my cloud of yak fiber in the mail from Bijou Basin Ranch which is very near to our ranch.
This fiber is SO SOFT!!! It's like my hands can not comprehend how soft it is. It's crimpy, too. So, I'm hoping to be able to needlefelt with it. It looks like it will work out just fine.
I hope every fiber lover gets a chance to touch yak fiber rovings or clouds. This is amazing!!!
This fiber is SO SOFT!!! It's like my hands can not comprehend how soft it is. It's crimpy, too. So, I'm hoping to be able to needlefelt with it. It looks like it will work out just fine.
I hope every fiber lover gets a chance to touch yak fiber rovings or clouds. This is amazing!!!
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